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THE VINTAGE. 




lANEKS SHBrHEKDS. 



CLARET AND OLIVES, 



FROM 



THE GARONNE TO THE EHONE 



L^ 



OE, 



^OTES SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY, 
BY THE WAY. 



BY 



ANGUS B. REACH, 

AUTUOK OP "the STOKY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC. 







N E W-Y E K : 
GEOEGE P. PUTNAM, 10 PAEK PLACE. 
. 1852. 



This work is reprinted from the early proof sheets of 
the London edition, by special arrangement. 




TO 



CHARLES MACKAY, ESQ., LL. D., 



MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY ERIEND 



CJjge flips 



ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



CONTENTS. 



'^~*~^ 

FAOK. 

CHAPTEE I. 

The Diligence — ^Frencli Country Places — The English in Guienne — ^Bordeaux — 
Old Bordeaux — A Bordeaux Landlord — A Suburban Vintaging — The Vint- 
age Dinner 9-25 

CHAPTER II. 

Claret v. Port— The Claret Soil — ^The Claret Vine — Popular Appetite for 
Grapes — Variable qualities of the Claret Soil — French Veterans— The "Au- 
thorities" in France 26-40 

CHAPTEE III. 

The Claret Vintage— The Treading of the Grape — The Last Drops of the Grape — 
Wanderings amongst the Vineyards — Wandering Vintagers — The Vintage 
Dinner — The Vintagers' Bedroom — The Claret Chateaux — The Chateau 
Margaux 41-56 

CHAPTEE IV. 

The Landes — The Bordeaux and Teste Eailway — M. Tetard and his Imitator — 
Start for the Landes — The Language of the Landes— A Eailway Station in 
the Landes — The Scenery of the Landes — The Stilt- walkers of the Landes — 
A Glimpse of Green 5T-73 

CHAPTEE V. 

The Clear Water of Arcachon — ^Legend of the Baron of Chatel-morant — The 
Eesin Harvest — The Witches of the Landes — The Surf of the Baj'- of Bis- 
cay — French Priests— Do the Landes Cows give Milk? — The Amour Pa- 
trice of the Landes 74-94 

CHAPTEE VL 

Dawn on the Garonne — The Landscape of the Garonne— The Freaks of tlje 
Old Wars in Guienne — Agen — Jasmin, the Last of the Troubadours — South- 
ern Cookery and Garlic — The Black Prince in a New Light — Cross-country 
Travelling in France 95-115 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE YII. 

Pau — The English in Pau— English and Eussians — The Yiew of the Pyrenees — 
The Castle — The Statue of Henri Quatre — His birth — ^A Vision of his Life — 
Eochelle — St. Bartholomew— I vry — Heni-i and Sully — Henri and Gabrielle — 
Henri and Henriette d'Entragues — Eavaillac 116-123 

CHAPTEE VIII. 

The Val d'Ossau — The Vln de Jurancon— Pyrenean Cottages — The Bernais 
Peasants — The Devil learning Basque — The "Wolves of the Pyrenees — The 
Bears of the Pyrenees — The Dogs of the Pyrenees — An Auberge in the 
Pyrenees — Omens and Superstitions in the Pyrenees — The Songs of the 
Pyrenees 124-139 

CHAPTEE IX. 

Wet "Weather in the Pyrenees — ^Eaux Chaudes out of Season, and in the Eain — 
Plucking the Indian Corn at the Auberge at Laruns— The Legend of the 
"Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed into a Bear .... 140-149 

CHAPTEE X. 
The Solitary Big Hotel— The Knitters of the Pyrenees — The "Weavers of the 
Pyrenees — Pigeon-catching in the Pyrenees — The Giant of the Pyrenean 
Dogs— Murray and Commis Voyageurs — The Eastern Pyrenees — The Le- 
gend of Orthon 150-165 

CHAPTEE XL 

Languedoc — ^The "Austere South" — Bdziers and the Albigenses— The Foun- 
tain of the Greve — The Bishop and his Flock — The Canal du Midi — The 
Mistral— Em-al Billiard-playing 166-lTT 

CHAPTEE XIL 

Travelling by the Canal du Midi — Travelling French People— The Salt Har- 
vest — Equestrian Threshing Machines- -Cette — The Mediterranean — The 
" Made" "Wines — The Priest on "Wines — La Cuisine FranQaise . . 178-194 

CHAPTEE XIIL 

The Olive-gathering — A Night with the Mosquitoes — Aigues-Mortes — The 
Fever in Aigues-Mortes — My Cicerone in Aigues-Mortes — The Pickled 
Burgundians — Eeboul's Poetry — The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes . . 195-209 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Fen Landscape — Tavern Allegories— Eoman Eemains — Eoman Architecture — 
Eoman Theatricals — The Maison Carree — Greek Architecture — Catholic 
and Protestant— The "Weaver's Cabane — Protestant and Catholic . . 210-227 

CHAPTEE THE LAST. 

Backward French Agriculture — French Eural Society — The Small Property 

System— French "Encumbered Estates" 223-235 



€kxti mii ®ltos. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE DILIGENCE OLD GUTENNE AND THE ENGLISH IN FRANCE BORDEAUX AND 

A SUBURBAN VINTAGING. 

8/ OIL A la voila I La ville de Bordeaux /" 

The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy 
state of doze in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back 
amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy 
banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled 
out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard. 

"- Voila I la Voila V The bloused peasant who drove 
the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place ; his long 
whip whistled and cracked ; the horses flung up their heads 
as they broke into a canter, and their bells rang like a joy 
peal ; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle, which 
maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the 
banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and 
barked in recognition of his master's voice. 

I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge 
of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green plain, carpeted 
1* 



10 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

with vines. Right across it ran the broad, white, chalky- 
highway, powdering with dust the double avenue of chesnuts 
which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great river, 
crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretch- 
ing, apparently for miles, a magnificent facade of high white 
buildings, broken here and there by the foliage of public 
gardens, and this dark embouchures of streets ; while, behind 
the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose high into 
the clear morning air, a goodly array of towering Grothic 
steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing weather- 
cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux. 

The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though 
I had been tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave 
it again, rather than make the exertion of encountering 
octroi officers, and plunging into strange hotels. For after 
all, comfortable Diligence travelling makes a man lazy. It 
is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness ; in the 
banquette, too, you are never cramped ; there is luxurious 
roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to 
the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you indulge a serene 
passiveness, rolling lazily on with the rumbling mountain 
of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and the low 
monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form 
a soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly 
and dreamingly you watch the action of the team — these 
half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses, trotting 
manfully in their rough harness, while the driver — oh, how 
different from our old coaching dandies ! — a clumsy peasant, 
in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and 
round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flour- 
ishing that whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth 
jargon of his province to the jingling team below. And next 
you watch the country or the road. A French road, like 



TEE DILIGENCE. \ I 

a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, 
mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid 
across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and 
seems to tip over the horizon ; or if you are in an undula- 
ting wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs 
each successive ridge ; and you know that in the valleys it 
is just the same as on the hill tops. You see your dinner 
before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see 
your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the 
slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the 
country looks — open, desolate, and bare. Here and there 
a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the sun- 
burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congrega- 
tion of barns — the bourgs in which the small land-owners 
collect ; now a witch of an old woman herding a cow ; anon 
a solitary shepherd all in rags, knitting coarse stockings, 
and followed by a handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in 
the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's 
coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed 
Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glitter- 
ing in the glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, 
tramping the dreary way to their native village, footsore, 
weary and slow, their hairy knapsacks galling their shoul- 
ders, and their tin canteens evidently empty. Another dili- 
gence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout 
to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of 
window. Then we overtake a whole caravan of roulage^ or 
carriers, the well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge 
wheels, the horses, with their clumsy harness and high 
peaked collars, making a scant two miles an hour. Not an 
equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, 
no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage— only now and 
then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Cure on a shocking 



12 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

"bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated anomalous jing- 
ling appearance of a vague shandrydan. And so on from 
dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted towns, with lant- 
erns swinging above our heads, and open squares with scrubby 
lime trees, and white-washed cafes all around ; and by a 
shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, 
a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged senti- 
nel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping watch over it ; and 
then, out into the open, fenceless, hedgeless country, and on 
upon the straight unflinching road, and through the long, 
long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, 
and the melancholy boiirgs^ and the wandering soldiers, and 
the dusty carriers' carts as before. 

One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country 
towns — the marvellously small degree of distinction of rank 
amid the people. No neighboring magnate rattles through 
the lonely streets in the well-known carriage of the Hall or the 
Grrange, graciously receiving the ready homage of the towns- 
people. No retired man of business, or bustling land-agent, 
trots his smart gig and cob — no half-pay of&cer goes gossip- 
ping from house to house, or from shop to shop. There is 
no banker's lady to lead the local fashions — no doctor, set- 
ting oif upon his well-worked nag for long country rounds — 
no assemblage, if it be market day, of stout full-fed farmers, 
lounging, booted and spurred, round the Ked Lion or the 
Plough. Working men in blouses, women of the same rank 
in the peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there 
a nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket, who 
generally turns up at the scantily-attended table d'hote at 
dinner time — such are the items which make up the mass 
of the visible population. You hardly see an individual 
who does not appear to have been born and bred upon the 
spot, and to haye no ideas and no desires beyond it. Left 



FRENCH GOUNTBY PLAGES. I3 

entirely to themselves, tlie people have vegetated in these 
dull streets from generation to generation, and, though clus- 
tered together in a quasi town — perhaps with octroi and 
mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard tables by the 
half-dozen — the population is as essentially rural as though 
scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day, by 
either landlord or agent. It often happens that a large 
landed proprietor has not even a house upon his ground. 
He lets the land, receives his rent, and spends it in Paris 
or one of the large towns, leaving his tenants to go on cul- 
tivating the ground in the jog-trot style of their fathers and 
their grandfathers before them. The French, in fact, have 
no notion of what we understand by the life of a country 
gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting visit to his 
land when partridge and quail* are to be shot ; but as to 
taking up his abode au fond de ses tefres^ mingling in what 
we would call county business, looking after the proceedings 
of his tenants, becoming learned, in an amateur way, in 
things bucolic, in all the varieties of stock and all the quali- 
ties of scientific manures — a life, a character, and a social 
position of this sort, would be in vain sought for in the ru- 
ral districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more 
different meanings in the world than those attached to our 
" Country Life," and the French Vie de Chateau. The 
French proprietor is a Parisian out of Paris. He takes the 
rents, shoots the quails, and the clowns do the rest. 

An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west 
of France. That fair town, rising beyond the yellow Ga- 
ronne, was for three hundred years and more an English capi- 
tal. Who built these gloriously fretted Grothic towers, rising 
high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor stee- 
ples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the 
Cathedral of St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew 



14 • GLABET AMD OLIVES. 

the Black Prince lield high court, and there, after Poitiers, 
the captive king of France revelled with his conqueror, with 
the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was 
born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English 
seneschal of Bordeaux, with his retinue, " amused them- 
selves," as gloriously gossipping old Froissart tells, " with 
the citizens and their wives ;" and from thence Talbot, Earl 
of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six years of age^ 
mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of An- 
jou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were 
shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the 
brutal murder of the. glorious Maid of Domremy. It is 
true that we are at this moment in the Department of the 
Dordogne, and that when we cross the river we shall be in 
that of the Grironde. But we Englishmen love the ancient 
provinces better than the modern departments, >vhich we 
are generally as bad at recognising as we are in finding out 
dates by Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments 
may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the rich land 
we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the " Fair Duchy," 
and part and parcel of old Aquitaine, the dowry of Eleanor, 
when she wedded our second Henry. 

Is it not strange to think of those old times in which 
the English were loved in the Bourdelois — fine old name — 
and the French were hated, in which the Gaston feudal 
chiefs around protested that they were the ''natural born 
subjects of England, which was so kind to them?" Let us 
turn to Froissart •.—The Duke of Anjou having captured 
four Gascon knights, forced them, nolens volens.^ to take the 
oath of allegiance to the King of France, and then turned 
them about their business. The knights went straight to 
Bordeaux, and presented themselves before the seneschal 
of the Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, " Gentle- 



THE ENGLL'SH M GUIENNE. 15 

men, we will truly tell you that before we took the oath, 
we reserved in our hearts our faith to our natural lord, the 
king of England, and for anything we have said or done, 
we never will become Frenchmen." Our gallant forefa- 
thers appear, on the whole, to have led a joyous life in Grui- 
enne. In truth, their days and nights were devoted very 
much to feasting themselves, and plundering their neigh- 
bours : two pursuits into which their Gascon friends enter- 
ed with heart and soul. It is quite delightful to read in 
Froissart, or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how " twelve 
knights went forth in search of adventures," an announce- 
ment which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of 
gentlemen with indistinct notions of meum and tuum^ 
went forth to lay their chivalrous hands upon anything 
they could come across. Of course these trips were made 
into the French territory, and really they appear to have 
been conducted with no small degree of politeness on either 
side, when the English " harried " Limousin, or the French 
rode a foray into Gruienne. The chivalrous feeling was 
strong on both sides, and we often read how such-and-such 
a French and English knight or squire did courteous battle 
with each other ; the fight being held in honour of the fair 
ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in Guienne, 
but in Touraine, when the English and the Gascons be- 
leaguered a French town, heralds came forth upon the 
walls and made this proclamation : — " Is there any among 
you gentlemen, who for love of his lady is willing to try 
some feat of arms ? If there be any such, here is Gauvin 
Micaille, a squire of the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, 
completely armed and mounted, to tilt three courses with 
the lance, give three blows with the battle-axe, and three 
strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if there 
be none among you in love." The challenge was duly ac- 



IQ CLABET AND OLIVES. 

cepted. Eacli combatant wounded the other, and the Earl 
of Shrewsbury sent to the squire of Beauce his compli- 
ments, and a hundred francs. This last present takes 
somewhat away from the Amadis de Graul, and Palmerin of 
England vein ; but the student of the old chroniclers, 
particularly of the English in France, will be astonished 
to find how long the chiyalric feeling and ceremonials co- 
existed with constant habits of plundering and unprovoked 
forays. 

Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne 
is the early development of the English brasquerie^ and 
haughtiness of manner to the Continentals. The Grascons 
put up, however, with many a slight, inasmuch as their over- 
sea friends were such valiant plunderers, and they, of 
course, shared the spoils. Listen to the frank declaration 
of a Gascon gentleman who had deserted from the English 
to the French side. Some one asking him how he did, he 
answers : " Thank God, my health is very good ; but I had 
more money at command when I made war for the king of 
England, for then we seldom failed to meet some rich mer- 
chants of Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom 
we squeezed, which made us gay and dehonnair ; but that 
is at an end." The questioner replies : " Of a truth, that 
is the life Gascons love. They willingly hurt their neigh- 
bour." Not even all the plunder they got, however, could 
silence the grumblings of the native knights at the haughty 
reserve of the English warriors. " I," says the canon of 
Chimay, " was at Bordeaux when the Prince of Wales 
marched to Spain, and witnessed the great haughtiness 
of the English, who are affable to no other nation than 
their own. Neither could any of the gentlemen of Gas- 
cogny or Aquitaine obtain ofiice or appointment in their 
own country, for the English said they were neither on a 



BORDEAUX. 17 

level with them, nor worthy of their society." So early and 
so strongly did the proud island blood boil up ; while many 
an Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and 
saturnine bearing among an outspoken and merry-hearted 
people, perpetuates the old reproach, and keeps up the old 
grievance. 

All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that 
I have not the remotest intention of describing the archae- 
ology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever. Who- 
ever wants to know the height of a steeple, the length of 
an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake 
themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be 
picturesquely profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, 
screens, or mouldings ; nor magniloquently great upon the 
arched, the early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant 
schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor 
Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and- 
dry school of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, 
every traveller who ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag ; 
but, leaving the mere archaeology and carved stones alone 
in their glory, I will try to sketch living, and now and then 
historical, France — to move gossippingly along in the by- 
ways rather than the highways — always more prone to 
give a good legend of a grey old castle, than a correct 
measurement of the height of the towers ; and always 
seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting 
picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's 
eye. 

When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had just 
commenced ; and having ever had a special notion that vin- 
tages were very beautiful and poetic affairs, and a still 
more confirmed taste and reverence for claret, it was my 
object to see as much of the vintage as I could — to see the 



18 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

juice rush from the grape, wlaicli makes so good a figure in 
the bottle. Letters of introduction I had none. But there 
is a knack of making one's own way — of making one's own 
friends as you go — in which I have tolerable confidence, 
and which did not fail me in the present conjuncture. 
First, to settle and make up my notions, I strolled vaguely 
about the city, buying local maps and little local' guide- 
books. Bordeaux is emphatically what the French call a 
riant town, with plenty of air, and such pure, soft, bright, 
sunny air. In the centre of a broad grand Place^ — dotted 
with very respectable trees for French specimens, embla- 
zoned with gay parterres, sprinkled with orange shrubs in 
bloom, and holed with no end of round stone basins, in 
which dolphins and Neptunes spout from their bronze 
mouths the live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, 
and Apollos stand all around — there rises upon his massive 
pedestal the graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman 
in the ample cloak and doublet of Louis Quatorze, knots of 
carven ribbons decorating his shoulders, and flowing locks 
descending from under his broad-brimmed, looped-up hat. 
This is the statue of a M. de Tournay, an ancient intendant 
of the province, who was almost the creator of modern Bor- 
deaux. Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and 
heathen gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate the 
city. He reared great sweeps of pillared and porticoed 
buildings, and laid out broad streets and squares, on that 
enormous scale so characteristic of the grand inonarque. 
He made Bordeaux, indeed, at once vast, prim, and mass- 
ively magnificent. The mercantile town got quite a courtly 
air ; and when the tricolor no longer floated in St. Domin- 
go, and the commerce of the Grironde declined, so that not 
much was left over and above the wine trade, which, as all 
the world knows, is the genteelest of all the traffics, Bor- 



OLD BORDEAUX. 19 

deaux became what it is — a sort of retired city, having 
declined business — quiet, and clean, and prim, and aristo- 
cratic. Such, at least, is the new town. With old Bor- 
deaux M. de Tournay meddled not ; and when you plunge 
into its streets, you leap at once from eighteenth century ter- 
races into fourteenth century lanes and tortuous by-ways. 
Below you, rough, ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares : 
alt)0ve, the hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked ga 
bles, and long projecting eaves, and hanging balconies; 
quaint carvings in blackened wood and mouldering stone ; — 
the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully ricketty, but glo- 
riously picturesque — charming to look at, but woful to live 
in ; deep black ravines of courts plunging down into the 
masses of piled up, jammed together dwellings ; squalid, 
slatternly people buzzing about like bees ; bad smells per- 
meating every street, lane, and alley ; and now and then » 
the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering round a 
great old church, with its vast Grothic portals, and, high up, 
its carven pinnacles and grinning goutieres, catching the 
sunshine far above the highest of these high-peaked roofs. 
This is the Bordeaux of the English and the Gascons — the 
Bordeaux which has rung to the clash of armour — the Bor- 
deaux which was governed by a seneschal — the Bordeaux 
through whose streets defiled, 

" With many a cross-bearer before, 
And many a spear behind," 

the christening procession of King Eichard the Second. 

We shall step into one church, and only one, that of the 
Feuillans. There, upon a dark and massive pedestal, lies 
stretched the effigy of an armed man. His hands are 
clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked beard, and he is clad 
cap-d-pied in steel. Who was the doughty warrior, thus 



20 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

resting in his mail 1 Strange to say, no warrior at all ; but 
the quietest and most peaceable of God's beings. He had 
an odd, pedantic father, who brought him up in strange Pa- 
ganwise. The boy was never addressed but in Latin. He 
never had a mother-tonge. He was surrounded with a 
blockade of Latin speakers to keep afar off the profanation 
of French ; he was mentally fed upon the philosophers and 
the poets of old Rome, and taught to weep for Seneca in 
the tub, as the nearest catastrophe which .could touch his 
sympathies. Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his 
nerves, had him awakened every morning by the sound of 
soft music. Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry and 
pedagoguism was insufficient to ruin the native genius of 
Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, whose " essays ought to 
lie in every cottage window." 

I have said that I was in search of some one to intro- 
duce me to the vineyards and the vintagers. In a day or 
two I had pitched upon my landlord as my protector. His 
hotel was a very modest one, where never before, I do be- 
lieve, had Englishmen come to make everything dear and 
disagreeable. The red boards of the aristocratic Murray 
were unknown in his salle a inanger. He hadn't an ounce 
of tea in his house ; and very probably, if he had, he would 
have fried it with butter, and served it a la something or 
other. When I say he, however, I mean madame, not mon- 
sieur. The latter would have made a capital English inn- 
keeper, but he was a very bad French one. My gentleman, 
who was more than six feet high, and a stately personage, 
was cut out for a '' mine host." He would have presided in 
a bar — which means drinking a continued succession of 
glasses of ale — with uncommon effect, for his temperament 
was convivial and gossipy ; but he had no vocation for the 
kitchen, which is the common sphere of a French innkeeper 



A BOBDEAUX LANDLORD. 21 

not of the first class, and where, under the proud denomina- 
tion of the chef.^ and clad in white like a grimly ghost, he 
bustles among pipkins, and stew-pans, and skillets, and lifts 
little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down them 
at blue charcoal furnaces — over which the plats are sim- 
mering. Now my good landlord never troubled himself 
about these domestic matters ; but he was very clever at 
standing on the outer steps of his door, smoking cigars ; 
and, indeed, would stay very willingly there all day — at 
least until he heard his wife's voice, upon which he would 
make a precipitate retreat to a neighbouring cafe, where he 
would drink eau sucree and rattle dominoes on a marble 
table till dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a per- 
sonal acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable 
rate of six sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set flat 
stones, very like red and grey cornelians, and just as pretty, 
which it was the fashion in the days of the Directory to 
mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a time, tone dangling 
from each fob. These stones are picked up in great quanti- 
ties from the light shingly soil, whereon ripens the grape, 
which is pressed into claret wine ; and handsome and lus- 
trous in themselves, they thus become a species of memen- 
tos of chateau Margaux and chateau Lafitte. To the land- 
lord, then, I stated that Iwished to see some vine-gather- 
ing. 

" Could anything be more lucky ? His particular friend 
M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting that very day, 
and was going to give a dinner that very night on the oc- 
casion. I should go — he should go. A friend of his was 
M. So-and-so's friend ; in fact, we were all friends together." 
The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in 
want of an excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed 
my application as the Israelites did manna in the desert. 



22 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

It was meat and drink and amusement to him, and off we 
went. 

As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage 
upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my 
first initiation into the plucking of the grapes. But I passed 
a merry day, and eke a busy one. There are no idle spec- 
tators at a vintage— all the world must work ; and so I 
speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed 
by a fat old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of 
very dirty shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration — with a 
huge pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches, in 
the midst of an uproarious troop of young men, young 
women, and children — threading the avenues between the 
plants — stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered 
branches — their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow 
serpents among the broad green leaves^ — and sometimes 
shouting out merry badinage, sometimes singing bits of 
strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all the time, as far 
as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls. 
The whole thing was very jolly ; 1 never heard more 
laughing about nothing in particular, more open and un- 
blushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing of the 
good man, whose grapes were going partly into the baskets, 
tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the 
children and old people out of the green alleys to the 
pressing-tub, and partly into the capacious stomachs of the 
gatherers. At first I was dainty in my selection of the 
grapes to be chosen, eschewing the under-ripe and the over- 
ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her woolly 
hair but very .dark but merry face, I imagined her to have 
a touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. " Cut away," 
she said ; " every grape makes wine." 

" Yes — but the caterpillars — " 



A SUBURBAN VINTAGING. 23 

" They give it a body." 

" Yes — but the snails — " 

" 0, save the snails, please do, for me !" said a little 
girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells. 

" What do you do with them ?" I inquired. 

" Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend. 

I looked askance. 

" You can't think how nice they are with vinegar !" said 
the mulatto girl. 

I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and 
said nothing ; but added my mite of snail-flesh to the col- 
lection. 

I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when some 
one — there was petticoats in the case — dashed at him from 
behind, and instantly a couple of hands clasped his neck, 
and one of them squashed a huge bunch of grapes over his 
mouth and nose, rubbing in the burst and bleeding fruit 
as vigorously as if it were a healing ointment, while streams 
of juice squirted from between the fingers of the fair as- 
sailant, and streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. 
After being half burked, the good man shook his fist at the 
girl as she flew, laughing, down the alley ; and then resu- 
ming his talk with me, he said : " We call that Faire cles 
moustaches. We all do it at vintage time." And ten 
minutes thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go chasing an 
ancient crone of a pail-bearer, a bunch of very ripe grapes 
in his hand, amid the delighted hurrahs of all assembled. 

Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make the 
best of the daylight. The ordinary hired labourers dined, 
indeed, soon after noon ; but I am talking of the feast of 
honour. It was served in a thinly-furnished, stone-paved, 
damp and dismal salle a manger. A few additional ladies 
with their beaux, grand provincial dandies, all of whom 



24 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

tried to outstrip each other in the magnijQcence of their 
waistcoats, had arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very 
hot, close weather for a day or two past, and everybody 
was imprecating curses on the heads of the musquitos. The 
ladies, to prove the impeachment, stripped their sleeves, and 
showed each other the bites on their brown necks ; and the 
gentlemen swore that the scamps were biting harder and 
harder. Then came the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat 
— all the agricultural interest could not have furnished a 
worse — and his wife, very red in the face, for she had 
cooked dinner for the vintagers and for us ; and then our 
host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet scull 
cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was copious, and, as 
may be conceived, by no means served in the style of the 
cafe de Paris. But soiqje.^ bouilli^ roti, the stewed and the 
fried, speedily went the way of all flesh. Everybody 
trinque-ed with everybody : the jingle of the meeting 
glasses rose even over the clatter of the knives and forks ; 
the jolly host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he 
issued imperious mandates for older and older wine. His 
comfortable wife, whose appetite had been aff"ected by the 
cooking, made up for the catastrophe at the dessert. The 
old grandfather garrulously narrated tales of wondrous 
vintages long ago. The waistcoats had all the scandal of 
Bordeaux at their finger ends ; and the young ladies with 
the musquito bites took to " making moustaches " on their 
male friends, with pancakes instead of grapes — a process 
by which the worthy host was, as usual, an especial sufferer. 
As may be conceived, my respected landlord was far 
more in his element than at home with his wife. He eat 
more, drank more, talked more, and laughed more than any 
two men present. Afterwards he grew tender and senti- 
mental, and professed himself to be an ardent lover of his 



THE VINTAaE DINNER. 25 

kind — a proposition wliicli I suspect he afterwards narrowed 
specially in favour of a most mosquito-ridden lady next 
him — to the high wrath of a waistcoat opposite, who said 
sarcastic and cutting things, which nobody paid any attention 
to ; and the landlord, being really a good-looking and plausible 
fellow, went on conquering and to conquer, and drinking and 
be'ng drunk to ; until, under a glorious outburst of moon- 
light which paled the blinking candles on the table, the 
merry company broke up ; and mine host of Bordeaux, after 
certain rather unsteady walking, suddenly stopped on the 
centre of the bridge, and refused to go further until he had 
told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity and 
aplomb ; so we paused together on the granite pavement, and 
after looking mysteriously at the G-aronne, the moon, and 
the dusky heights of Floriac, my companion informed me 
in a hoarse whisper that he should leave France, his native 
and beloved land, where he felt sure that he was not appre- 
ciated, and pitch his tent, " la has^ en Angleterre^ parceque 
les Anglais etaient si hons enfantsV 

" So ho !" thought I ; " a strange reminiscence of the 
old Grascons." But on the morrow, my respectable enter- 
tainer had a bad headache, a yellow visage, and an entire 
forgetfulness of how he had got home at all. 



CHAPTER 11. 



CLARET AND THE CLARET COLT^TRY. 



THAT our worthy forefathers in Guienne loyed good wine, 
is thing not to be adoubted — even by a teetotaller. When 
the Earl of Derby halted his detachments, he always had 
a pipe set on broach for the good of the company ; and it is 
to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines of 
the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely im- 
ported into England : 

'' Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne, 
Of the Euele, and of the Kochel wyn." 

As far down, indeed, as Henry YIII.'s time you might 
get Gascony and Guienne wine for eightpence a gallon, and 
the comfortable word " claret " was well known early in the 
seventeenth century. One of its admirers, however, about 
that time gave odd reasons for liking it, to wit — " Claret is 
a noble wine, for it is the same complexion that noblemen's 
coats be of." This gentleman must have been a strenuous 
admirer of the aristrocracy. The old Gascon growth was, 
however, in all probability, what we should now call coarse, 
rough wine. The district which is blessed by the growth 
of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte, was a stony 
desert. An old French local book gives an account of the 



CLABET V. PORT. 



27 



"savage and solitary country of Medoc;" and the wines of 
tlie Bordelois, there is every reason to believe, were grown 
in the strong loamy soil bordering the river. By the time 
that the magic spots had been discovered, blessed with the 
mystic properties which produced the Queen of Wine we had 
been saddled with — our tastes perverted, and our stomachs 
destroyed — by the woful Methuen treaty — heavy may it sit 
on the souls of Queen Anne, and all her wigged and pow- 
dered ministers — if, indeed, men who preferred port wine 
to claret can be conceived to have had any souls at all 
worth speaking about — and thenceforth John Bull burnt 
the coat of his stomach, muddled the working of his brain 
made himself bilious, dyspeptic, headachey, and nationally 
stupid, by imbibing a mixture of strong, coarse wines, with 
a taste, but no flavour, and bedevilled with every alcoholic 
and chemical adulteration which could make its natural 
qualities worse than they were. See how our literature 
fell off. The Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or 
Rochel wyn ;" and we had the giants of those days. The 
Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret. Port came 
into fashion — port sapped our brains — and, instead of 
Wycherly's Country Wife, and Vanbrugh's Relapse, we had 
Mr. Morton's Wild Oats, andMr. Cherry's Soldier^ sDaughter. 
It is really much to the credit of Scotland, that she stood 
staunchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing 
to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain 
— Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch 
houses, a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. 
In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter ta2)2nt 
hen, holding some three quarts — think of that, Master 
Slender, — " reamed," Anglice mantled, with claret just 
drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it, snapping your 
fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour, Scot- 
land fell : 



28 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

" Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, 
Firm was his mutton, and his claret good ; 
' Let him drink port !' the English statesman cried. 
He drank the poison, and his spirit died !" 

But enougli of this painful subject. As Quin used to 
say, " Anybody drink port % No ! I thoiight so : Waiter, 
take away the black strap, and throw it out." 

Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, 
the further from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place 
for good ordinary wine ; on the contrary, the stuff they give 
you for every-day tipple is positively poor, and very flavour- 
less. In southern Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines 
is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous 
they give you nectar : at the little town of Tain, where the 
B;hone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, 
they give you something better than nectar for less. But 
the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary indeed ; not 
quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the Yin de Surenne. which, 
Brillat Savarin says, requires three men to swallow a glass- 
full — the man who drinks, and the friends who uphold him 
on either side, and coax, and encourage him ; but still mea- 
gre and starveling, as if it had been strained through some- 
thing which took the virtue out of it. Of course, the best 
of wine can be had by the simple process of paying for it, 
but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day tipple of the 
place. 

A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing 
that the vintage was in full operation, I put myself into a 
respectable little omnibus, and started for the true claret 
country." In a couple of hours I was put down at the door 
of the only auberge in the tiny village of Margaux, and to 
any traveller who may hereafter wish to visit the famous 
wine district, I cordially commend " The Rising Sun," kept 



THE GLABET SOIL. 29 

by the worthy " Mere Cadillac." There you will have a 
bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch parlour ; a grand old 
four-poster of the ancient regime, something between a bed 
and a cathedral ; a profusion of linen deliciously white and 
sweet smelling ; and la Mere will toss you up a nice little 
pottage, and a cotelette done to a turn, and an omelette 
which is perfection ; and she will ask you, in the matter of 
wine, whether you prefer ordinaire or vieux? and when 
you reply, Vieux et du meilleur^ she will presently bustle in 
with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the first glass 
of which will induce you to lean back in a tranquil state of 
general happiness, and contemplate with satisfaction even 
the naughty doings of the wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, 
and her sisters Blanche and Henriette, with Buridan and 
G-aulnay, in the Tour de Nesle — illustrations of which popu- 
lar tragedy deck the walls on every side. 

While thus agreeably employed, then, I may enlighten 
you with a few topographical words about the claret district. 
Look at the map, and you will observe a long tract of coun- 
try, dotted with very few towns or villages, called the 
Landes, stretching along the sea coast from the Pyrenees 
to the mouth of the Gironde. At one place the Landes are 
almost sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradu- 
ally away, the great river Glaronne shouldering them, as it 
were, into the sea. Now these Landes (into which we will 
travel presently) are, for the most part, a weary wilderness 
of pine-wood, morasses, sand-deserts, and barren shingle. 
On the other hand, the low banks of the Garonne are gen- 
erally of a fat, loamy, and black soil, called locally, Palus. 
Well, between the Palus and the Landes there is a longish 
strip of country from two to five miles broad, a low ridge or 
backbone, which may be said to be the neutral and blending 
point of the sterile Landes and the fat and fertile Palus. 



30 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

And truth to tell, the earth seems as if the influence of the 
latter had much to do to hear up against the former. A 
Norfolk farmer would turn with a contemptuous laugh from 
the poor-looking stony soil. " Why," says he, " it's all sand, 
and gravel, and shingle, and scorched with the sun. You 
would not get a blade of chickweed to grow there." The 
proprietors of Medoc would be very glad if this latter as- 
sertion were correct, for the weeding of the vineyards forms 
no inconsiderable item in the expense of cultivation ; but 
this much may be safely predicted of this strange soil, that 
it would not afford the nourishment to a patch of oats, which 
that mode-st grain manages to extract from the bare hill- 
side of some cold, bleak. Highland croft, and yet that it 
furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding the 
most truly generous and consummately flavoured wine ever 
drank by man since Noah planted the first vine slip. 

You have now finished the bottle of Yieux. Up, and 
let us out among the vineyards. A few paces clears uS of 
the little hamlet of Margaux, with its constant rattle of 
busy coopers, and we are fairly in the country. Try to 
catch the general coup d^cEil. We are in an unpretending 
pleasant-looking region, neither flat nor hilly — the vines 
stretching away around in gentle undulations, broken here 
and there by intervening jungles of coppice-wood, by strips 
of black firs, or by the stately avenues and ornamental 
woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the bottoms of 
the shallow valleys, you seem standing amid a perfect sea 
of vines, which form a monotonous horizon of unvaried 
green. Attaining the height beyond, distant village spires 
rise into the air — the flattened roofs and white walls of 
scattered hamlets gleam cheerfully forth from embowering 
woods of walnut trees — and the expanse of the vineyards is 
broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording the 



THE CLARET VINE, 31 

crops of coarse natural liay, upon which are fed tlie slowly* 
moving, raw-boned oxen which you see dragging lumbering 
wains along the winding dusty way. 

And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing ro- 
mantic in their appearance, no trellis-work, none of the em- 
bowering, or the clustering, which the poets are so fond of. 
Here, in two words, is the aspect of some of the most famous 
vineyards in the world. 

Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, 
scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above the surface, 
planted in rows upon the summit of deep furrow ridges, and 
fastened with great care to low, fence-like lines of espaliers, 
which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the huge 
fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings 
of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are 
attached to the horizontally running stakes with withes, or 
thongs of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains 
and attention with which every twig has been supported 
without being strained, and how things are arranged so as 
to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly 
allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of 
matters ; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now 
and then you find a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, 
and straggling, and sprawling, and intertwisting their 
branches like beds of snakes ; and again, you come into the 
district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a 
grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported 
by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs 
are invariably the great wine givers. If ever you want to 
see a homily, not read, but grown by nature, against trust- 
ing to appearances, go to Medoc and study the vines. Walk 
and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, 
weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes. 



32 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

ignominiouslj bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a 
man on the rack — these utterly poor, starved, and meagre- 
looking growths, allowing, as they do, the gravelly soil to 
show in bald patches of grey shingle through the straggling- 
branches — these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed 
and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most 
priceless, and the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such 
are the vines which grow Chateau Margaux at half a sove- 
reign the bottle. The grapes themselves are equally un- 
promising. If you. saw a bunch in Covent Garden, you 
would turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer 
was trying to do his customer with over-ripe black currants. 
Lance's soul would take no joy in them, and no sculptor in 
his senses would place such meagre bunches in the hands 
and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or 
his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of 
judging of the nature of either men or grapes by their 
looks. Meantime, let us continue our survey of the coun- 
try. No fences or ditches you see — the ground is too 
precious too be lost in such vanities — only, you observe 
from time to time a rudely carved stake stuck in the ground, 
and indicating the limits of properties. Along either side 
of the road the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No 
raspers, no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, 
no polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly 
in a state of high go-ofi&sm — only, when the grapes are 
ripening, the people lay prickly branches along the way- 
side to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges among the 
espaliers, from taking a refreshing mouthful from the clus- 
ters as they pass ; for it seems to be a fact that everybody, 
every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or 
its nature in other parts of the world, when brought among 
grapes, eats grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for 



VABIABLE QUALITIES OF THE GLABET SOIL. 33 

grapes is perfectly preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sick- 
ened grocers' boys, who, after the first week loathe figs. 
and turn poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at, the love of 
grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every 
garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with 
breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, and between breakfast, 
lunch, dinner, and supper. The labourer plods along the 
road munching a cluster. The child in its mother's arms 
is tugging away with its toothless gums at a bleeding- 
bunch ; while as for the vintagers, male and female, in the 
less important plantations, Heaven only knows where the 
masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring in- 
cessantly at the metier^ as they do, from dawn till sunset. 
A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrous- 
ly capricious and fitful nature of the soil. A forenoon's 
walk will show you the earth altering in its surface quali- 
ties almost like the shifting hues of shot silk — gravel of a 
light colour fading into gravel of a dark — sand blending 
with the mould, and bringing it now to a dusky yellow, 
now to an ashen grey — strata of chalky clay every now 
and then struggling into light only to melt away into beds 
of mere shingle — or bright semi-transparent pebbles, in- 
debted to the action of water for shape and hue. At two 
principal points these blending and shifting qualities of soil 
put forth their utmost powers — in the favoured grounds of 
Margaux, and again, at a distance of about fifteen miles 
further to the north, in the vineyards of Lafitte, Latour, 
and between these latter, in the sunny slopes of St. JuUien. 
And the strangest thing of all is, that the quality — the 
magic — of the ground changes, without, in all cases, a cor- 
responding change in the surface strata. If a fanciful and 
wilful fairy had flown over Medoc, flinging down here a bless- 
ing and there a curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect 
2* 



34 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

could not have been more oddly various. You can almost 
jump from a spot unknown to fame, to another clustered 
with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen 
furrows often make all the difference between vines pro- 
ducing a beverage which will be drunk in the halls and 
palaces of England and Russia, and vines yielding a har- 
vest which will be consumed in the cabarets and estaminets 
of the neighbourhood. It is to be observed, however, that 
the first-class wines belong almost entirely to the large 
proprietors. Amid a labyrinth of little patches, the pro- 
perty of the labouring peasants around, will be a spot ap- 
pertaining to, and bearing the name of, some of the famous 
growths ; while, conversely, inserted, as if by an accident, 
in the centre of a district of great name, and producing 
wine of great price, will be a perverse patch, yielding the 
most commonplace tipple, and worth not so many sous per 
yard as the surrounding earth is worth crowns. 

How comes this ? The peasants will tell you that it 
doesn't come at all. That it is all cant and hlagiie and puff 
on the part of the big proprietors, and that their wine is 
only more thought of because they have more capital to 
get it bragged about. Near Chateau Lafitte, on a burning 
afternoon, I took refuge beneath the emblematic bush ; for 
the emblem which good wine is said not to require, is 
stillj in the mid and southern districts of France, in 
universal use ; in other words, I entered a village public- 
house. 

Two old men, very much of the general type of the 
people of the country — that is, tall and spare, with intelli- 
gent and mildly-expressive faces and fine black eyes, were 
discussing together a sober bottle. One of them had lost 
an arm, and the other a leg. As I glanced at this peculi 
arity, the one-legged man caught my eye. 



FMENGH VETERANS. 35 

" Ah !" he said, " looking at our misfortunes ; I left my 
leg on Waterloo." 

" And I," chimed in his companion, " left my arm at 
Trafalgar." 

" Sacre /" said the veteran of the land. " One of the 
cursed English bullets took me in the knee, and spoiled as 
tight a lancer as they had in the gallant 10th." 

" And I," rejoined the other, " was at the fourth main- 
deck gun of the Pluton, when I was struck with the splin- 
ter while we were engaging the Mars. But we had our 
revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars' captain's head off !" 
— a fact which I afterwards verified. Captain Duff, the 
officer alluded to, was thus killed upon his quarter- 
deck, and the same ball shattered two seamen almost to 
pieces. 

" Sacr^ /" said the ci-devant lancer, " I 'd like to have a 
rap at the English again — I would — the English — nom de 
tonnerre — tell me — did n't they murder the emperor !" 

A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped him. 
I had spoken so few words, that the fact that a son of 
perjide Albion was before them was only manifested by the 
expression of my face. 

" Tiens /" continued the Waterloo man, " You are an 
Englishman." 

The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so keen 
a hand as his comrade, nudged him ; a hint, I suppose, in 
common phrase, to draw it mild ; but the ex-laneer of the 
10th was not to be put down. 

" Well, and if you are, what then, eh ? I say I would 
like to have another brush with you." 

" No, no ! We have had enough of brushes !" said the 
far more pacific riian of the sea. " I think mon voisin-^ 
that you and I have had quite enough of fighting." 



36 CLAEET AND OLIVES. 

" But they killed tlie emperor. Sacr^ nom de tous les 
diables — they killed the emperor." 

My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain and 
Ireland was listened to with great impatience by the maim- 
ed lancer, and great attention by the maimed sailor, who 
kept up a running commentary : 

" Eh ! eh ! entendez cela. Now, that's quite different 
(to his friend) from what you tell us. Come — that's anoth- 
er story altogether ; and what I say is, that that's reason- 
able." 

But the lancer was not to be convinced — " Sacri bleu ! 
— they killed the emperor." 

All this, it is to be observed, passed without the slightest 
feeling of personal animosity. The lancer, who, I suspect, 
had passed the forenoon in the cabaret, every now and then 
shook hands with me magnanimously, as to show that his 
wrath was national — not individual ; and when I proposed 
a bottle of rather better wine than they had been drinking, 
neither soldier nor sailor had a word to say in objection. 
The wine was brought, and very good it was, though not, of 
course, first-class claret. 

" What do you think of that ?" said the sailor. 

" I wish I had as good every day in England," I replied. 

" And why haven't you ?" said the fierce lancer. " You 
might, if you chose. But you drink none of our wines." 

I demurred to this proposition ; but the Waterloo man 
was down on me in no time. " Yes, yes ; the wines of the 
great houses — the great proprietors. Sacr^ ! — the farceurs 
— the blageurs — who puff their wines, and get them puffed, 
and great prices for them, when they're not better than ours 
— the peasant's wines — when they're grown in the same 
ground — ripened by the same sun ! Mille diables ! Look 
at that bottle ! — taste it ! My son-in-law grew it. My son- 



FBENGE VETERANS. 37 

in-law sells it ; I know all about it. You shall have that 
bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte people and the Larose 
people would charge you ten francs for it ; and it is as good 
for ten sous as theirs for ten francs. I tell you it grew side 
by side with their vines ; but they have capital — they have 
power. They crack off their wines, and we — the poor 
people ! — we, who trim and dig and work our little patches 
— no one knows anything about us. Our wine — bah ! — 
what is it % It has no name — no fame ! Who will give us 
francs % No, no ; sous for the poor man — francs for the 
rich. Copper for the little landlord ; silver — silver and 
gold for the big landlord ! As our cure said last Sunday : 
' Unto him who has much, more shall be given.' Sacr€ Dieu 
de dieux I — Even the Bible goes against the poor !" 

All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's 
jacket, and uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations against 
such unnecessary vehemence. The Trafalgar man was clearly 
a take-it-easy personage ; not troubled by too much thinking, 
and by no means a professional grievance-monger. So he 
interposed to bring back the topic to a more soothing sub- 
ject, and said that what he would like, would be to see lots 
of English ships coming up the Gironde with the good cot- 
tons and woollens and hardwares we made in England, and 
taking back in exchange their cheap and wholesome wines 
— not only the great vintages (cms) for the great folk, but 
the common vintages for the common folk, " Indeed, I 
think," he concluded, " that sitting here drinking this good 
ten sous' wine with this English gentleman — who's going to 
pay for it — is far better than fighting him and hacking him 
up, or his hacking us up, with swords and balls and so forth." 

To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in 
the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't 
see it at all. He would like to have another brush. He 



38 yJLARET AND OLIVES. 

wasn't half done for yet. It was all very well ; but war was 
grand, and glory was grand. " Vive la guerre /" and " Vive 
la gloire /" 

" But," said tlie sailor, " there is death in glory !" 

" Eh hien V shouted the warrior, with as perfect French 
sentiment as ever I heard, " Vive la mo7't /" 

In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we 
took the peasant wines, something might he made of us. 
The case was not utterly hopeless ; and when I rose to go, 
he proposed a stirrup-cup — a coup cle Vetrier — to the wash- 
ing down of all unkindness ; but, in the very act of swallow- 
ing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he 
would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his 
lips, he put down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, 
" Mais loourtant^ vous avez tut VEmjpereur /" 

I have introduced this episode principally for the pur- 
pose of showing the notions entertained by the small pro- 
prietary as to the boasted superiority of the large vineyards ; 
but the plain truth is, that the great growers are perfectly 
in the right. I have stated that the quality of the soil 
throughout the grape country varies almost magically. 
Well, the good spots have been more or less known since 
Medoc was Medoc ; and the larger and richer residents have 
got them, by inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, 
almost entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly 
improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They 
studied and experimentalized until they found the most 
proper manures and the most promising cultures. They 
grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most 
admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after gene- 
ration, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, 
without regard to the quantity — scrupulously taking care 
that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way 



TEH'' AUTHORITIES'" IN FRANCE. 39 

to the tub — that the whole process shall be scrupulously 
clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously 
attended to — the results of all this has been the perfectly- 
perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous 
price ; while the peasant proprietors, careless in cultivation, 
using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for quan- 
tity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed 
in producing wines which, good as they are, have not the 
slightest pretence to enter into competition with the liquid 
harvests of their richer and more enlightened neighbours. 

But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration 
than I have hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the 
claret vintagers. Yet still, for a moment, I must pause 
upon the threshold. Will it be believed — whether it will 
or not it is, nevertheless, true — that the commencement of 
the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or the 
convenience of the proprietors, but by the autorites of each 
arrondissement ? As September wanes and the grape ripens, 
the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of experts ; 
which jury proceed, from day to day, through the vineyards, 
inspecting and tasting the grapes and cross-questioning the 
growers ; after which, they report to the mayor a special 
day on which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think 
that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a 
very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to 
begin a fortnight before ; another, in a converse locality^ 
may not be ready to commence for a fortnight afterwards. 
NHmporte — the French have a great notion of uniform sym- 
metry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole district 
starts together — the mayor issuing, j^ar autorit^^ a highly- 
official-looking document, which is duly posted by yellow- 
breeched gens-d'armes^ and, before the appearance of which, 
not a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single 



40 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

grape. Now, what must Ibe the common sense of a country 
which permits, for one instant, the continuance of this 
wretched little tyrannical humbug % Only think of a trum- 
pery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the 
farmers of EnglancT that now they might begin to cut their 
wheat ! The mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's 
throat, and the beadle's stajff down the mayor's. But they 
manage these things — not exactly — better in France. What 
would France be without les autorites ? Could the sun rise 
without a prefect ? Certainly not. Could it set without a 
sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on 
France unless they were furnished with passports for the 
firmament 1 Clearly not. Could the rain rain on France 
unless e^ch drop came armed with the vise of some wonder- 
ful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could 
the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about 
the vintage, command it ? It is quite clear, that if you 
have any doubt about these particulars, you know very little 
of the privileges, the rights, the functions, and the powers, 
of the " authorities" in France. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE VINTAGE AND THE VINTAGERS. 



much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now 
proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of the 
earth — the great yearly festival and jubilee of the property 
and the labour of Medoc. October, the " wine month," is 
approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been 
watched — every cold night breeze felt with nervous appre- 
hension. Upon the last bright weeks in summer, the savour 
and the bouquet of the wine depend. Warmed by the blaze 
of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild breezes of the 
west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the 
grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and 
their culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage im- 
plements begin to be sought out, cleaned, repaired, and 
scoured and sweetened with hot brandy. Coopers work as 
if their lives depended upon their industry ; and all the 
anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and 
country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of 
miles around pour in ragged regiments into Medoc. 

There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort 
poetical, associations connected 'with the task of securing 
for human use the fruits of the earth ; and to no species of 
crop do these picturesque associations apply with greater 
force than to the ingathering of the ancient harvest of the 



42 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

vine. From time immemorial, the season has typified 
epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness — of good fare 
and of good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive 
of the vintage are still literally true. The march of agri- 
cultural improvement seems never to have set foot amid the 
vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East, so it is 
with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still 
bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the 
treader are still red in the purple juice which maketh 
glad the heart of man. The scene is at once full of beauty, 
and of tender and even sacred associations. The songs of 
the vintagers frequently chorussed from one part of the 
field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, 
pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of 
laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle 
is alive with the moving figures of men and women, stoop- 
ing among the vines or bearing pails and basketfuls of 
grapes out to the grass-grown cross-roads, along which the 
laboring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and 
cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of pur- 
ple tubs heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious 
fruit. The congregalion of every age and both sexes, and 
the careless variety of costume, add additional features of 
picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old man 
labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his 
black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. 
Quaint broad-brimmed straw and felt hats — handkerchiefs 
twisted like turbans over straggling elf locks — swarthy 
skins tanned to an olive-brown — black flashing eyes — and 
hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the 
precious fruit — all these southern peculiarities of costume 
and appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant char- 
acteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of 



THE TREADING OF THE GRAPE. 43 

jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more saucy retorts— 
of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic but expressive 
vernacular, is called " chaflp," — is kept up with a vigour 
which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end 
of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the 
general fancy, and procures for the w.orceaii a lusty encore. 
Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from 
rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his 
watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious 
berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded 
of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the care- 
ful superintendent. He turns up the clusters to ascertain 
that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in 
the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing- 
trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are perse- 
vering manfully in their long-continued dance. 

Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or cuvier de 
pressoir^ consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive 
shallow tub, varying in size from four square feet to as 
many square yards. It is placed either upon wooden tres- 
tles or on a regularly built platform of mason-work under 
the huge rafters of a substantial ocithouse. Close to it 
stands a range of great butts, their number more or less, 
according to the size of the vineyard. The grapes are flung 
by tub and caskfuls into the cuvier. The treaders stamp 
diligently amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours 
plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the trough 
into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage 
of the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Sup- 
pose, at the moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief 
space empty. The treaders — big, perspiring men, in shirts 
and tucked-up trowsers — spattered to the eye^ with splatches 
of purple juice, lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe 



44 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

their foreheads. But their respite is short. The creak of 
another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately the 
waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather 
hole in the wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to 
wrench out tub after tub, and to tilt their already half- 
mashed clusters splash into the reeking pressoir. Then to 
work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful eagerness into 
the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink 
almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in 
the masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their 
feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, 
having, as it were, drawn the first sweet blood of the new 
cargo, the eager tramping subsides into a sort of quiet, 
measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with 
their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the 
fruit hither and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed 
berries in every possible way to the muscular action of the 
incessantly moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing 
in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the 
jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the 
wooden spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, 
the juice-jet immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, per- 
haps, half or three-quartars of an hour thoroughly to squeeze 
the contents of a good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. 
When at length, however, no further exertion appears to be 
attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of expressed 
juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the 
vats, and their contents tilted in ; while the men in the 
trough, setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of 
dripping grape-skins in along with the juice. The vats suf- 
ficiently full, the fermentation is allowed to commence. 
In the great cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener 
at the door — he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter 



FERMENTATION. 45 

further — may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of 
the great darkened hall, the huhblings and seethings of the 
working liquid — the inarticulate accents and indistinct 
rumblings which proclaim that a great metempsychosis is 
taking place — that a natural substance is rising higher in 
the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these 
great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of 
mere mawkish, sweetish fluid to noble wine — to a liquid 
honoured and esteemed in all ages— to a medicine exer- 
cising a strange and potent effect upon body and soul — great 
for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and 
poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously 
in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred — 
for the atmosphere about the vats is death — as if Nature 
would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and 
as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to 
wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful 
nature— fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar 
curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas ? I saw the 
vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after the 
grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation had not as 
yet properly commenced, so access to the place was possi- 
ble ; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading 
the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the 
nostrils ; while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of 
my conductor, to the vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps 
eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as 
if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience 
to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a 
hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to 
boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unap- 
proachable. 

Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon 



46 GLAEET AND OLIVES. 

anything like a detailed account of wine-making. I may 
only add, that the refuse skins, stalks, and so forth, which 
settle into the bottom of the fermentation vats, are taken 
out again after the wine has been drawn off, and subjected 
to a new squeezing — in a press, however, and not b}^ the 
foot — the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-fla- 
voured wine, full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks 
of the grape, and possessing no aroma or bouquet. The 
Bordeaux press for this purpose is rather ingeniously con- 
structed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips 
of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the 
staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron 
screw. The rape^ as the refuse of the treading is called, is 
piled beneath it ; the screw is manned capstan fashion, and 
the unhappy seeds, skins and stalks, undergo a most dismal 
squeezing. Nor do their trials end there. The wine-ma- 
kers are terrible hands for getting at the very last get-at- 
able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rins- 
ing an exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch 
the very flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the 
doubly-squeezed rape into water, let it lie there for a short 
time, and then attack it with the press again. The result 
is a horrible stuff called piquette^ which, in a wine country, 
bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest, 
most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to 
honest porter or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as 
the ghost of wine ! — wine minus its bones, its flesh, and its 
soul ! — a liquid shadow ! — a fluid nothing ! — an utter nega- 
tion of all comfortable things and associations ! Neverthe- 
less, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding 
quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction. 

And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is 
universal in France, with the exception of the cases of the 



WINE-TREADING. 47 

sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne, the grapes 
for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by the 
human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly pictu- 
resque as is the process of wine-treading, it is unquestion- 
ably rather a filthy one ; and the spectacle of great brown 
horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing and sprawling in 
the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy species of 
'eeling, which however, seems only to be entertained by 
those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully 
askance at the operation when I first came across it ; and 
when I was invited — by a lady, too — to taste the juice, of 
which she caught up a glassful, a certain uncomfortable 
feeling of the inward man warred terribly against polite- 
ness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeam- 
ish. Often and often did I see one of the heroes of the 
tub walk quietly over a dunghill, and then jump — barefooted, 
of course, as he was — into the juice ; and even a vigilant 
proprietor, who was particularly careful that no bad grapes 
went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why 
a press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more 
convenient, I was everywhere assured that all efforts had 
failed to construct a wine-press capable of performing the 
work with the perfection attained by the action of the hu- 
man foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would 
so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole 
moisture of the grape which forms the highest flavoured 
wine. The manner in which the fruit was tossed about was 
pointed out to me, and I was asked to observe that the 
grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible fashion 
and from every possible side, worked and churned and 
mashed hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and 
muscles of the foot. As far as any impurity went, the ar- 
gument was, that the fermentation flung, as scum, to the 



48 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

surface, every atom of foreign matter lield in suspension 
in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained 
was as exquisitely pure as if human flesh had never 
touched it. 

In the collection of these and such like particulars, I 
sauntered for days among the vineyards around ; and ut- 
terly unknown and unfriended as I was, I met everywhere 
the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I would lounge, 
for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch 
the movements, of the people. Presently the proprietor, 
most likely attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange 
faded outer garment, half shooting coat half dressing gown, 
would come up courteously to the stranger, and learning 
that I was an English visitor to the vintage, would busy 
himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligi- 
ble the rationale of all the operations. Often I was in- 
vited into the chateau or farm-house, as the case might be ; 
a bottle of an old vintage produced and comfortably dis- 
cussed in the coolness of the darkened, thinly-furnished 
room with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires, and 
beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished 
floors, gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these 
occasions, the conversation would often turn on the rejec- 
tion, by England, of French wines — a sore point with the 
growers of all save the first-class vintages, and in which I 
had, as may be conceived, very little to say in defence 
either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which 
were getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my 
room with illustrations from the Tour de Nesle for the gene- 
ral kitchen and parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, enscon- 
cing myself in the chimney corner — a fine old-fashioned 
ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood logs — listened 
to the chat of the people of the village; they were nearly all 



WAND EE ma VINTAGERS, 49 

coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's 
work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of 
very thin wine. I never benefited very much, however, by 
these listenings. It was my bad luck to hear recounted 
neither tale nor legend — to pick up, at the hands of my com- 
IJOtatores^ neither local trait nor anecdote. The conversa- 
tion was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place — 
the prospects of the vintage — elaborate comparisons of it 
with other vintages — births, marriages, and deaths — a 
minute list of scandal, more or less intelligible when con- 
veyed in hints and allusions — v/ere the staple topics, mixed 
up, however, once or twice with general denunciations of the 
niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring proprietors to 
their vintagers — giving them for breakfast nothing but 
coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down 
with, and for dinner not much more tempting dishes. 

In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers — the fixed 
and the floating population ; and the latter, which makes an 
annual inroad into the district, just as the Irish harvesters 
do into England and Scotland, comprising a goodly propor- 
tion of very dubious and suspicious-looking characters. 
The gen-cV armerie have a busy time of it when these gen- 
try are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry dis- 
appear with the most miraculous promptitude ; small linen 
articles hung out to dry have no more chance than if Fal- 
stafi"'s regiment were marching by ; and garden-fruit and 
vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a rigid 
application of the maxim that la 2^'i'opriete c'est le vol. 
Where these people come from is a puzzle. There will be 
vagrants and strollers among them from all parts of France 
— from the Pyrenees and the Alps — from the pine-woods of 
the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They unite in bands 
of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief 
• 3 



50 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

» 

wlio bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of 
the company, and keeps up some degree of order and sub- 
ordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional ap- 
plication of a good thick stick. I frequently encountered 
these bands, making their way from one district to another, 
and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never 
collected. '• They looked vicious and abandoned, as well 
as miserably poor. The women, in particular, were as 
brazen-faced a set of slatterns as could be conceived ; and 
the majority of the men— ^tattered, strapping-looking fellows, 
with torn slouched hats, and tremendous cudgels — were ex- 
actly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have 
scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when 
thus on the tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and 
stealing to which I have alluded to goes on. When actually 
at work, they have no time for picking up unconsidered tri- 
fles. Sometimes these people pass the night — all together, 
of course — in out-houses or barns, when the chef can strike 
a good bargain ; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side 
of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often 
see their watch-fires glimmering in the night ; and be sure 
that where you do, there are twisted necks and vacant nests 
in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was saun- 
tering along the beach at Paulliac — a little town on the 
river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the 
Grironde, and holding precisely the same relation to Bor- 
deaux as Gravesend does to London — when a band of vinta- 
gers, men, women, and children, came up. They were 
bound to some village on the opposite side of the Grironde, 
and wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accord- 
ingly ensued between the chief and a group of boatmen. 
The commander of the vintage forces offered four sous per 
head as the passage-money. The bargemen woy,ld hear of 



THE VINTAGE BINNEU. 51 

nothing under five ; and after a tremendous verbal battle, 
the vintagers announced that they were not going to be 
cheated, and that if they could not cross the water, they could 
stay where they were. Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. 
Creeping under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of 
the bare beach, the women were placed leaning against the 
somewhat hard and large pillows in question ; the children 
were nestled at their feet and in their laps ; and the men 
formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for 
and obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks 
which he distributed to his dependents ; and upon this sup- 
per the whole party went coolly to sleep — more coolly, in- 
deed, than agreeably ; for a keen north wind was whistling 
along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze of high- 
piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the black, 
cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement 
was come to ; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours 
afterwards, I found the party rather more comfortably en- 
sconced under the ample sails of the barge which was to 
bear them the next morning^ to their destination. 

The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of 
stripping the vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases 
in which the people are treated well by the proprietor, fre- 
quently a very pretty and very picturesque spectacle. It 
always takes place in the open air, amongst the bushes, or 
under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long ta- 
bles are spread upon tressles ; but in general no such for- 
mality is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves 
in groups upon the ground — men and women picturesquely 
huddled together — the former bloused and bearded person- 
ages — the latter showy, in their bright short petticoats of 
home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs twist- 
ed like turbans round their heads — each man and woman 



52 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

with a deep plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the 
house hustle about, distributing huge brown loaves, which 
are torn asunder, and the fragments chucked from hand to 
hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup, smoking like a volca- 
no, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and dealt about 
in mighty ladlefuls ; while the founder of the feast takes 
care that the tough, thready houilli — like lumps of boiled- 
down hemp — shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. 
Piquette is the general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, 
and every species of mug, glass, cup, and jug about the es- 
tablishment is called in to aid in its consumption. A short 
rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping in the shade, 
over, the signal is given, and the work recommences. 

" You have seen our salle a inanger^'' said one of my 
courteous entertainers — he of the broad-brimmed straw hat ; 
" and now you shall see our chamhre a couclier?'' Accord- 
ingly, he led me to a barn close to his wine-cellars. The 
place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here and 
there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall ; while 
all round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung 
by straps and strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and 
other baggage of the labourers. On one side, two or three 
swarthy young women were playfully pushing each other 
aside, so as to get a morsel of cracked mirror stuck against 
the wall — their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks, 
in the preliminary stage of its arrangement. 

" That is the ladies' side," said my cicerone^ pointing to 
the girls ; " and that" — extending his other hand — '• is the 
gentleman's side." 

" And so they all sleep here together ?" 

" Every night. I find shelter and straw ; any other ac- 
commodation they must procure for themselves." 

" Rather unruly, I should suppose ?" 



THE VINTAGERS' BEDROOM. 53 

" Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but 
sleep. They go off, sir, like dormice." 

" OA, dl plait a Mossieu '" put in one of the damsels. 
" The chief of the band does the police." {Fait la gen- 
cVarmeric). 

" Certainly — certainly," said the proprietor ; " the gen- 
tlemen lie here, with their heads to the wall ; the ladies 
there ; and the chef de la bande stretches himself all along 
between them." 

" A sort of living frontier ?" 

" Truly ; and he allows no nonsense." 

" II est nieme excessivement severe^'' interpolated the 
same young lady. 

" He need be," replied her employer. " He allows no 
loud speaking — no joking ; and as there are no candles, no 
light, why they can do nothing better than go quietly to 
sleep, if it were only in self-defence." 

One word more about the vintage. The reader will 
easily conceive that it is on the smaller properties, where 
the wine is intended, not so much for commerce as for house- 
hold use, that the vintage partakes most of the festival na- 
ture. In the large and first-class vineyards the process 
goes on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as pos- 
sible made a cold matter of business. He who wishes to 
see the vintages of books and poems — the laughing, joking, 
singing festivals amid the vines, which we are accustomed 
to consider the harvests of the grape — must betake him to 
the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which 
neighbour helps neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon 
which whole families labour merrily together, as much for 
the amusement of the thing, and from good neighbourly 
feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of 
course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any 



54 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

absolute necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into 
the state of the grapes — all of them hard or rotten, going 
slap-clash into the cuvier — which, in the case of the more 
precious vintages, forms no small check upon a general state 
of careless jollity. Every one eats as much fruit as he 
pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions it is 
that 3^ou hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and 
choruses of the vintage — many of these last being very 
pretty bits of melody, generally sung by the women and 
girls, in shrill treble unison, and caught up and continued 
from one part of the field to another. 

Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage 
will ever be beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. 
The rude wains, creaking beneath the reeking tubs — the 
patient faces of the yoked oxen — the half-naked, stalwart 
men, who toil to help the cart along the ruts and furrows 
of the way — the handkerchief- turbaned women, their gay, 
red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the 
leaves — the children dashing about as if the whole thing 
were a frolic, and the grey-headed old men tottering cheer- 
fully adown the lines of vines, with baskets and pails of 
gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs — the whole picture 
is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by as- 
sociation than actuality. 

And now, reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously car- 
ven and emblazoned fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard 
restorateur, Vefours, the Freres, or the Cafe de Paris ; or 
perhaps ensconced in our quieter and more sober rooms — 
dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more com- 
fortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you 
sink as into quagmires, but with more agreeable results, — 
snugly, Header, ensconced in either the one or the other 
locality, after the waiter has, in obedience to your sum- 



THE CLARET CHATEAUX, 55 

mons, produced the carte de vins^ and your eye wanders 
down the long list of tempting nectars. Spanish and Portu- 
guese, and better, far better, German and French — have 
you ever wondered as you read, " St. Jullien, Leoville, 
Chateau la Lafitte, Chateau la Rose, and Chateau 
Margaux, what these actual vineyards, the produce of 
which you know so well — what those actual chateaux, which 
christen such glorious growths, resemble'? If so, listen, 
and I will tell you. 

As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, 
some one will probably point out to you a dozen tiny 
sugar-loaf turrets, each surmounted by a long lightning-con- 
ductor, rising from a group of noble trees. This is the 
chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side of the 
way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the 
Gironde, a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum 
ornaments of the ancient fifteenth century country-house. 
That is the chateau Latour. Presently you observe that 
the entrance to a wide expanse of vines, covering a series 
of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge, is 
marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, 
adorned with a lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth 
that the vines behind produced the noted wine of Leoville. 
The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately groves of oak and 
walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an Italian 
garden — its white spreading wings gleaming through the 
trees, and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. 
One chateau, the most noted of all, remains. Passing 
along a narrow, sandy road, amid a waste of scrubby-look- 
ing bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a clump of 
noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white struc- 
ture glimmering garishly before you. Take such a coun- 
try house as you may still find in your grandmothers' sam- 



56 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

piers, decorated with a due allowance of doors and windows 
■ — clap before it a misplaced Grrecian portico, whitewash the 
whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling bright- 
ness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white 
likewise — and you have chateau Margaux rising before you 
like a wan, ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terra- 
ced gardens, and trimmed, clipped and tortured trees. But, as 
I have already insisted, nothing, in any land of vines, must 
be judged by appearances. The first time I saw at a dis- 
tance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered do- 
mains, I thought it looked very much like a union work- 
house, erected in the midst of a field of potatoes. 



CHAPTER lY. 

THE LANDES THE BORDEAUX AND TESTE EAILWAY — NINICHE THE LAND- 
SCAPE OF THE LANDES THE PEOPLE OF THE LANDES HOW THEY "WALK 

ON STILTS) AND GAMBLE. 

TURN to the map of France — to that portion of it which 
would be traversed by a straight line drawn from Bor- 
deaux to Bayonne — and you will observe that such a line 
would run through a vast extent of bare-looking country — 
of that sort, indeed, where 

" Geographers on pathless downs 
Place elephants, for want of towns." 

Roads, you will observe, are few and far between ; the 
names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you ; and, 
indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the map consists of white 
paper. The district you are looking at is the Landes, form- 
ing now a department by itself, and anciently constituting a 
portion of Gascony and Guienne. These Landes form one 
of the strangest and wildest parts of France, Excepting 
here and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated land, 
the whole country is a solitary desert — black with pine- 
wood, or white with vast plains of drifting sand. By 
these two great features of the district, occasionally diver- 
se 



58 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

sified by sweeps of green morass, intersected by canals and 
lanes of stagnant and often brackish water, the Landes 
take a goodly slice out of La Belle France. Their sea- 
line bounds the French side of the Bay of Biscay, stretch- 
ing from Bayonne to the mouth of the Grironde ; and at 
their point of greatest breadth they run some sixty miles 
back into the country ; thence gradually receding away 
towards the sea, as though pushed back by the course of 
the Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they 
fade away altogether. 

So much for the physique of the Landes. The inhabit- 
ants are every whit as rugged, strange, and uncultivated. 
As the Landes were four centuries ago, in all essential points, 
so they are now ; as the people were four centuries ago, in all 
essential points, so they are now. What should the tide of 
progress or of improvement do in these deserts of pine and 
sand? The people live on French soil, but cannot be 
called Frenchmen. They speak a language as unintelligible 
to a Frenchman as an Englishman ; they have none of the 
national characteristics — little, perhaps, of the national 
blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac, dismally 
passing dismal lives in the depths of their black forests, 
their dreary swamps, and their far-spreading deserts of 
white, fine sand. Such an odd nook of the world was not 
to be passed unvisited ; besides, I wanted to see the Biscay 
Surf; and accordingly I left Bordeaux for the Landes — not 
in some miserable cross-country vehicle — not knight-errant- 
wise, on a Bordelais Bosinante — not pilgrim-wise, with a 
staff and scrip — but in a comfortable railway-carriage. 

Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage ; and the rail- 
way in question — the Bordeaux and Teste line — is the sole 
enterprise of the kind undertaken and achieved in the south- 
west of France. 



THE BORDEAUX AND TESTE RAILWAY. 59 

" Railways ! " said the conducter of the Paris and Bor- 
deaux diligence to me, with that magnificent condescension 
with which a Frenchman explains to a Briton all about 
Perjide Albion 1 — " Railways, monsieur," he said, " as all 
the world knows, have achieved the ruin of the Old Eng- 
land, and presently they will do as much for France. 
Tenez ; they are cursed inventions — particulary the Paris 
and Bordeaux Railway." 

But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by rail- 
ways, France, like bankrupt linendrapers, will take a long 
time to ruin. The Bordeaux line crawls but slowl}" on. 
In 1850, we left the rails and took to the road at Tours: 
and, barring the bits of line leading down from some of the 
Mediterranean towns to Marseilles, the Bordeaux and Teste 
fragment was the sole morsel of railway then in operation 
south of Lyons. The question comes, then, to be, What 
earthly inducement caused the construction of this wilder- 
ness line, and how it happens that the only locomotives in 
'fair Gruienne whistle through the almost uninhabited 
Landes ? The fact seems to be, that, once upon a time, the 
good folks of Bordeaux were taken with an inappeasable 
desire to have a railway. One would have thought that 
the natural course of such an undertaking would have been 
northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled country 
of Medoc to the comparatively important towns of Paulliac 
and Lesparre. The enterprising Bordelais, however, had 
another scheme. Some forty miles to the west of the city, 
the sands, pines, and morasses of the Landes are broken 
by a vast shallow basin, its edges scolloped with innu- 
merable creeks, bays, and winding friths, into which, through 
a breach in the coast line of sand-hills flow the waters of 
the Atlantic. On the southern side of this estuary lie two 
or three scatterd groups of hovels, inhabited by fishermen 



60 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

and slieplierds — -the most important of the hamlets being 
kliown as Teste, or Teste-la-buch. Between Teste and 
Bordeaux, the only line of communication was a rutty road, 
half sand and half morass, and the only traffic was the oc- 
casional pilgrimage to the salt water of some patient sent 
thither at all risks by the Bordeaux doctors, or now and then 
the transit towards the city of the Garonne of the products 
of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers on the backs of a 
string of donkeys. Folks, however, were sanguine. The 
speculation " came out," shares got up, knowing people sold 
out, simple people held on, and the line was actually con- 
structed. No doubt it was cheaply got up. Ground could be 
had in the Landes almost for the asking, and from terminus 
to terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or em- 
bankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the stations 
are knocked up in the roughest and most primitive style. 
The result, however, astonished no one, save the share- 
holders. The traffic does not half pay the working expenses. 
Notwithstanding that some increase in the amount of com- 
munication certainly did take place, consequent upon the 
facility with which Teste can now be reached — a facility 
which has gone some way to render it a summer place of 
sea-side resort — the two trains which run ^:>cr diem seldom 
convey more than a dozen or so of third-class passengers, 
and the shareholders at length flung themselves into the 
hands of the Government : and, insisting upon the advantages 
which would accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bor- 
deaux line was finished, by a direct means of communication 
between the metropolis and a harbour in the bay of Biscay, 
they succeeded in hypothecating their line to the Govern- 
ment for a small annual subvention. Such is the present agree- 
able position of the single railway in the south-west of France. 
I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train, and, 



M. TETARD AND HIS IMITATOR. 61 

calling a citadine^ got tlie man to urge his horse to a 
gallop, so that we pulled up at the terminus with the 
animal in a lather. A porter approached, and grinned. 
" Monsieur has made haste, but the winter season begins 
to-day, and the train does not go for an hour and a half." 
There was no help for it, and I sauntered into the nearest 
cafe to read long disquisitions on what was then all the 
vogue in the political world — the " situation." I found the 
little marble slabs deserted — even the billiard-table aban- 
doned, and all the guests collected round the white Fayence 
stove. Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On one 
of the velvet stools sat an old gentleman of par^ticularly 
grave and reverend aspect — a most philosophic and sage- 
like old gentleman — and between his legs was a white 
poodle, standing erect with his master's cane in his paws. 
All the company were -in raptures with Niniche, who was 
going through his performances. . 

" Niniche," said the patriarch, " what does Monsieur 
Tetard do when he comes home late ?" • 

The dog immediately began to stagger about on its 
hind legs, sometimes losing its balance and then getting 
up again, looking all the time with a sort of stupid blinking 
stare at its master. It was clear that M. Tetard, when he 
came home late, did not come home sober. 

" Tiens I dest admirable I " shouted the spectators — 
burly fellows, with black beards, and honest tradesman- 
looking people, with glasses of eau sucrie in their hands. 

" And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's pro- 
prietor and instructor, "what does Madame Tetard do 
when Monsieur Tetard comes home late?" 

The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful 
volubility, a series of loud, shrill, yelping snaps, jerking 
itself up and down on its haunches, and flinging its paws 



62 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

about as if it had the hydrophobia. The spectators were 
enraptured. " It is actually her voice," said one. " Only 
the dog is too good-looking for her," said another. " Voila 
petite /" vociferated a third, holding a huge piece of bluish- 
tinted beetroot sugar to the performer, when suddenly the 
group was broken by a fussy, fat old gentleman with a 
white baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of heavy gold 
spectacles. 

"t/e clis — moiV shouted the new comer, in violent 
wrath ; '' que c' est ahominable ce que vous faites Id Pere 
Grignon.^'^ A murmur of suppressed laughter went through 
the group. Pere Grignon looked considerably taken aback, 
and the speaker aimed a hearty kick at Niniche, who dodged 
away round the stove. It was evident that he was no 
other than the injured and maligned Tetard himself In- 
stantly he broke into loud objurgations. He knew how 
that atrocious old Pei'e Grignon had taught his dog to 
malign him, the hete oiiiserable ! But as for it, he would 
person it — shoot it — drown it ; and as for Pere Grignon, 
who ought to have more sense, all the quartier knew what 
he was — an imbecille^ who was always running about carry- 
ing tales, and making mischief. But he would appeal to 
the authorities ; he would lay his complaint before the 
commissary of the quartier ; he would — he would — . At 
this moment the excited orator caught sight of the offend- 
ing poodle slipping to the door, and instantly sprung vigor- 
ously after him: — 

" Tenez-tenez ; don't touch Niniche — it's not his fault !" 
exclaimed the poodle's proprietor. But the dog had bolted, 
with Tetard in hot chase of his imitator, and vowing that 
he should be ecrased and abimid as soon as caught. There 
was, of course, great laughter at the whole proceeding ; and 
then the group betook themselves to the marble slabs and 



STABT FOB THE L ANDES. 63 

dominoes — the instructor of the offending quadruped coolly 
lighting his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard was, after 
all, a bon enfant^ and that over a petit vcrre he would always 
listen to reason. 

At length the tedious hour and a half wore away, and 
I entered the terminus — a roughly built wooden shed. The 
train consisted of a first, second, and third-class carriage ; 
but there were no first-class passengers, only one solitary 
second-class, and about a dozen third-classes, with whom I 
cast my lot. Miserable as the freight was, the locomotive 
whistled as loud and panted as vehemently as if it were 
yoked to a Great Western Express ; and off we went through 
the broad belt of nursery gardens, which encircles every 
French town, and where the very best examples of the 
working of the small proprietary system are to be seen. 
A rapid run through the once greatly famed and still 
esteemed vineyards of Hautbrion, and we found ourselves 
skirring along over a negative sort of country — here a 
bit of heath, there a bit of vineyard — now a bald &pot 
of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut stubble ; while a 
black horizon of pine-wood rose gradually on the right and 
left. On flew the train, and drearier grew the landscape ; 
the heath was bleaker — the pines began to appear in clumps 
— the sand-stretches grew wider — every thing green, and 
fertile, and riant disappeared. He, indeed, who enters the 
Landes, appears to have crossed a French frontier, and left 
the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards — no 
more rich fields of waving corn — no more clustered villages 
— no more chateau-turrets — no more tapering spires. You 
look up to heaven to see whether the sky is not changed, 
as well as the land. No ; all there is blue and serene as 
before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon 
undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you 



64 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

may travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog 
bark, or a bird sing. At last we were fairly among the 
woods, shooting down what seemed an eternal straight tun- 
nel, cleft by lightning through the pines. The trees stood 
up stark and stiff, like cast-iron ; the fir is at once a solemn 
and a rigid tree — the Puritan of the forest ; and down the 
side of each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish gash, 
running perpendicularly from the spread of the branches 
almost to the earth, and turned for explanation to an in- 
telligent-looking man, evidently a citizen of Bordeaux, oppo- 
site me. 

" Ah !" he said, "you are new to our Landes." 

I admitted it. 

" And these gashes down the trees — these, monsieur, 
give us the harvest of the Landes." 

" The harvest ! What harvest ?" 

" What harvest ? Resin, to be sure." 

" Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and a 
quick eye ; " resin, monsieur ; the only harvest that man 
can grow in sand." 

" Tenezl'' said my first interlocutor ; " the peasants cut 
that gash in the tree ; and at the root they scoop a little 
hollow in the ground. The resin perspires out of the wood, 
flows slowly and glutinously down the gash, and in a month 
or so, according to the heat of the weather, the hole is full, 
and the man who rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff, 
like soup, with a ladle." 

" That's a very good description," said the old bloused 
gentleman. " And then, sir" (addressing me), " we barrel 
our crop of the Landes. Yes, indeed, we barrel it, as well 
as they do the crop of the Medoc." 

" Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said the 
Bordeaux man. 



THE LANGUAGE OF THE L ANDES. 65 

Presently we pulled up at a station — a mere shed, with 
a clearing around it, as there might have been in Texas or 
Maine. I observed the name — Tohua-Cohoa, and remarked 
that it did not look like a French one. 

'•'• French one !" said he of Bordeaux ; " you don't expect 
to find French in this chaos % No, no ; it is some of the gib- 
berish the savages hereabout speak." 

" No such gibberish, and no such savages either," said 
the little keen-eyed man. ^^ Moi,je suis de LoMdes ; and 
the Landes language is a far finer language than French. 
French ! phoo, phoo !" 

And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and triumph- 
antly. The Bordeaux gentleman winked blandly at me, as 
if the keen-eyed man was a character to be humoured, and 
then looked doubtful and unconvinced. 

" Tohua-Cohoa," he said ; " it has a sacr6 tonnerre of a 
barbarous sound ; has it any meaning ?" 

" Meaning !" exclaimed the man of the Landes ; " I 
should think so. Tohua-Cohoa means, in French, Allez 
doucement ; and the place was so called because there was 
there a dangerous swamp, in which many a donkey coming 
up from Teste with fish to you of Bordeaux was smothered ; 
and so it got to be quite proverbial among the drivers of 
the donkeys, and they used to shout to each other, ' Tohua- 
Cohoa !' whenever they came near the slough ; meaning to 
look out, and go gently, and take care of the soft places." 

The man with the blouse, who was clearly the champion 
of the Landes, then turned indignantly from the Bordeaux 
man and addressed himself to me. " The language which 
the poor people here speak, monsieur, is a fine and expres- 
sive language, and liker the Spanish than the French. The 
people are poor, and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, 
in ghosts, and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did 



66 CLABET AND OLIVES, 

two or three hundred years ago. Very few of them can read, 
monsieur, and they have bad food and no wine. But never- 
theless, monsieur, they are hons enfants — hraves^ gens^ mon- 
sieur. They love their pine-woods and their sands as much 
as other people do their corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. 
They would die, monsieur, if you took them away from the 
sand and the trees. They are not like the Auvergnats, who 
go in troops to Paris to carry water from the fountains, and 
who are betes — betes — bien betes! They stay at home, mon- 
sieur. They wear their sheep-skins and walk upon their 
stilts, like their forefathers before them, monsieur ; and if 
you are coming here to see the Landes, and if you lose your- 
self in the woods, and see a light glimmering through the 
trees, and rap at the cottage door, monsieur, you will be 
welcomed, monsieur, and have the best they can offer to eat, 
and the softest they can offer to sleep on, Tenez^ tenez ; 
nous sommes 'pauvres et igiiorants mais nous sommes^ loyals 
et bons /" 

The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of the 
Landes man as he concluded his harangue, of which I have 
only reported the main points ; for, truth to tell, the poor 
fellow's vehemence was so great, and his utterance so rapid, 
that I lost nearly as much as I caught. The Bordeaux 
gentleman hammered the floor with his umbrella in satirical 
approbation, the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, 
and, the engine whistling, we pulled up again at a station 
similar to the first — a shed — a clearing, and black pine all 
around. There were just three persons on the rough plat- 
form — the station-master in a blouse, and two yellow-breech- 
ed gens-cTarmes. What could they find to occupy them 
among these drear pine-woods % What thief, who had not 
made a vow of voluntary starvation, or who had not a mor- 
bid taste for living upon resin, would ever have ventured 



THE SGENIJBY OF THE LANDES. 67 

among tliem ? But tlie autliorities ! Catch a bit of France 
without an " authority !" As they certainly are omnipotent, 
and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be supposed that 
they should be omnipresent. One man left the train at the 
station in question — a slouching, stupid, swarthy peasant, 
the authorities pounced upon him, evidently in prodigious 
glee at catching somebody to be autoritised over, and we 
left them, spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking 
" papers" presented by the profoundly respectful Jacques or 
Pierre. 

And now, before proceeding further, I may be allowed 
to describe, with some minuteness, the landscape which will 
greet the traveller in the Landes. Its mere surface-aspect 
I have already sketched ; but general terms go but a small 
way towards indicating the dreary grandeurs of that solemn 
wilderness. Over all its gloom and barrenness — over all 
its " blasted heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sod- 
den morasses, and glaring heaps of shifting sand — there is 
a strong and pervading sense of loneliness, a grandeur and 
intensity of desolation, which, as it were, clothes the land 
with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself Emerging from 
black forests of fir, the wanderer may find himself upon a 
plain, flat as a billiard-table, and apparently boundless as 
the ocean, clad in one unvaried, unbroken robe of dusky 
heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches 
of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine ; sometimes belts of 
scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the horizon on 
the left, and fading into the horizon on the right. Occasion- 
ally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and 
coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and marish-mosses, and 
tangled msases of dank vegetation, will tell of the unfath- 
omable swamp beneath. Dark veins of muddy water will 
traverse the flat oozy land, sometimes, perhaps, losing them- 



68 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

selves in broad shallow lakes, bordered again by the endless 
sand-banks and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings 
which dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic land- 
scape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated sometimes 
by many miles, often by many leagues. Round them the 
wanderer will descry a miserable field or two, planted with 
a stunted crop of rye, millet, or maize. The cottages are 
mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones, 
clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of 
tangled bushes, pine stakes, and broad-leaved reeds, beneath 
which cluster, when not seeking their miserable forage in 
the woods, two or three cows, mere skin and bone, and a 
score or two of the most abject-looking sheep which ever 
browsed. 

Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast, a 
long chain of lakes and water-courses, running parallel to 
the ocean, breaks their uniformity. The country becomes 
a waste of shallow pools, and of land which is parched in 
summer and submerged in winter. Running in devious 
arms and windings through moss and moor and pine; these 
" lakes of the dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and 
morasses which only the most experienced shepherds can 
safely thread. Here and there a village, or rather bourg, 
will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the pine-woods ; 
and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two will bS* observed 
floating like the canoe of a savage in the woodland lakes. 
Sometimes, as in the case of the basin of Arcachon, which 
will be presently described, these waters are arms of the 
sea ; and the retreating tide leaves scores of square miles 
of putrid swamp. Sometimes they are mere collections of 
surface- drainage, accumulating without any means of escape 
to the ocean, and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers on 
their shores. For, forming the extreme line of coast, there 



THE STILT-WALKERS OF THE LANDES. 69 

runs, for near two hundred miles, from the Adour to the 
G-aronne, a range of vast hills of white sand, as fine as 
though it had been sifted for an hour-glass. Every gale 
changes the shape of these rolling mountains. A strong 
wind from the land flings millions of tons of sand per hour 
into the sea, to be washed up again by the surf, flung on the 
beach, and in the first Biscay gale blown in whirlwinds in- 
land. A winter hurricane again from the west has filled up 
with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced 
waters inland, dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the 
pine-woods, flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered 
hamlets of the people, and burying for ever their fields of 
millet and rye. I shall presently have occasion to touch 
upon some disasters of this sort. Meantime, having made 
the aspect of the Landes familiar to the reader, I pursue 
the thread of my journey. 

The novelty of a population upon stilts — men, women, 
and children, spurning the ground, and living habitually 
four or five feet higher than the rest of mankind — irresisti- 
bly takes the imagination, and I leant anxiously from the 
carriage to catch the first glimpse of a Landean in his na- 
tive style. I looked long in vain. We passed hut after 
hut, but they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine 
burrowing round the turf walls gave evidence that the pork 
had proprietors somewhere. At last I was gratified ; as 
the train passed not very quickly along a jungle of bushes 
and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy figure rose above it, as if 
he were standing upon the ends of the twigs. The effect 
was quite eldritch. We saw him but as a vision, but the 
high conical hat with broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, 
the swarthy, bearded face, and the rough, dirty sheep-skin, 
which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the apparition, 
haunted me. He was come and gone, and that was all. 



70 CLABET AND OLIVJSS. 

Presently, however, the natives began to heave in sight in 
sufficient profusion. There were three gigantic-looking 
figures stalking together across an expanse of dusky heath. 
I thought them men, and rather tall ones ; but my com- 
panions, more accustomed to the sight, said they were boys 
on comparatively short stilts, herding the sheep, which were 
scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste. Anon, 
near a cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse clothes, 
with shortish petticoats, sauntering almost four feet from 
the ground, and next beheld at a distance, and on the sum- 
mit of a sand-ridge, relieved against the sky, three figures, 
each leaning back, and supported, as it seemed, not only by 
two daddy long-legs' limbs, but by a third, which appeared 
to grow out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon 
was promptly explained by my bloused cicerone^ who seemed 
to feel especial pleasure at my interest in the matter. The 
third leg was a pole or staff the people carry, with a new 
moon-shaped crutch at the top, which, applied to the back, 
serves as a capital prop. With his legs spread out, and his 
back-stay firmly pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels 
as much at home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs. 

" He will remain so for hours, without stirring, and 
without being wearied," said my fellow-passenger. " It is 
a way of sitting down in the Landes. Why, a shepherd 
could stand so long enough to knit a pair of stockings, ay, 
and not have an ache in his back. Sometimes they play 
cards so, without once coming off their stilts." 

" Ay, and cheat ! Mon Dieu I how they cheat !" said 
the Bordeaux gentleman. The native of the Landes re- 
luctantly admitted that that was the truth, and the other 
went on : — 

" These fellows here on the stilts are the most con- 
founded gamblers in Europe. Men and women, it's all the 



THE STILT- WALKERS OF THE L ANDES. 71 

same — play, play, play ; tliey would stake their bodies first, 
and their souls after. Tenez ; I once heard of a lot of the 
fellows playing in a wood till they were all but starved. In 
the day they played by daylight, and when night came, 
they kindled a bonfire and played in the glare. They 
played on and on, in spite of hunger and thirst. They 
staked their money — not that they had much of that — and 
their crops — not that they were of great value either — and 
their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes ponies, and 
then their furniture, and then their clothes, and, last of all, 
their stilts — for a Landes man thinks his stilts the princi- 
pal part of his wardrobe ; and, sacr^ ! monsieur, three of 
the fellows were ruined out and out, and had to give up 
their hats, and sheep-skins, and sabots, while the man who 
was the greatest winner walked home on his own stilts, with 
the stilts of all his comrades tucked under his arm." 

'• G-aming is their fault — their great fault," meekly ac- 
knowledged the blouse. 

" Not at all !" said his antagonist. " Cheating is their 
great fault. A Landes shepherd would cheat the devil 
with a greasy pack of cards." 

" The fact is," replied the apologist, " that they count 
cheating part of the game. Their motto is, win anyhow ; 
so it is no worse for one than the other. Cards is chance 
but cheating needs skill, and voila toutP 

We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed two 
or three clusters of poor huts, and a party of women up to 
their waists in a sluggish stream washing fleeces, while 
yellow patches of ripening maize began to recur quicker 
and quicker, showing that we had reached a comparatively 
thickly-peopled district, when all at once there burst upon 
my eyes a glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating 
land, of the brightest green I ever looked upon The green 



72 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

of tie greenest lawns of England, the green of the softest 
bogs of Ireland, the green even of the most intensely green 
patches of the Curragh of Kildare, were brown, and fuzzy, 
and rusty, compared to this wonderful hue. The land 
looked like one huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The 
brightness, the freshness, the radiance of the tint, was 
almost supernatural, and the eye, nursed for it, as it were, 
after our journey over the brown moors and black pines, 
caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour with rapture. 

" Come," I thought, " there are, at least, oases in the 
Landes. Never was turf so glorious ; never was sward so 
bewitching." And then, gazing far and wide upon the 
prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures labouring at the 
soil, and great, wains and carts drawn by oxen, looking like 
black specks upon a great, fresh, green leaf But, in a 
moment, I saw something more. Could I believe my eyes ? 
A ship ! Yes, verily, a ship, fast aground, high and dry 
upon the turf; and not only one, but two, three, four, good- 
sized schooners and chasse onar^es^ with peasants digging 
about them, and country carts high heaped with green rural- 
looking burdens. 

The Landes man saw my bewilderment. " The green- 
looking land," he said, " is the flat bottom of part of the 
bay of Arcachon. It is now dead low-water, and the coun- 
try people have come down with their carts to fill them 
with that green slimy sea-weed, which makes capital ma- 
nure ; and some of them, perhaps, have brought casks of 
resin for those ships which principally belong to Bordeaux, 
Bochelle, and Nantes, and come here and into other bays 
along the coast for the harvest of the Landes." 

The engine whistled. "We were at Teste — a shabby, 
ancient little village, with a deep stream flowing sluggishly 
around it, and dividing itself into a many-forked delta 



TESTE. 73 

along the level sand ; fishermen's hovels scattered on the 
beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them, nets drying, a 
considerable fishy smell pervading the atmosphere, with, 
beyond again, the black, unvarying mantle of pine-woods. 
There is a very good hotel at Teste ; thanks to its being 
one of the Bordeaux watering-places ; and there, for dinner, 
was provided red mullets, which would have made the red 
mullet-loving Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the 
difference between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and 
their brethren from the coast of Weymouth. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LANDES — THE BAY OF ARCAOHON AND ITS FISHERS THE LEGEND OF 

CHATEL-MORANT THE PINE-WOODS THE RESIN-GATHERER THE WILD 

HORSES THE SURF OF THE BAY OF BISCAY THE WITCHES OF THE 

LANDES — ^POPULAR BELIEFS, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS. 

THE sun was low in tlie lieavens next morning wlien I 
was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay now 
brimming full, and the schooners and chasse inarees. like 
the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double, ships and 
shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow 
had disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake 
stretched brilliant in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods 
like a mirror in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping 
bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing their depths 
with silent, weedy water-veins. 

Where the villages lie, there have been clearings made 
in the wood, precisely as one would expect to see in a New 
Zealand or Australian bay. Close to high-water mark, rows 
of rounded huts serve as storehouses for nets, and spars, and 
sails. Before them straggling jetties run on piles far to sea- 
ward ; behind, huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches 
of broad-leaved Indian corn, groups of houses — their roofs 
nearly flat, and their walls not above six feet, in some places 
not four feet, high — seem cowering away from observation. 



THE BAY OE ARCH AG ON AND ITS FISHERS. 75 

For every cottage built of stone, there are half-a-dozen 
out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so forth, piled up with old 
oars, broken masts, furze, pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking 
sod. I made my way to what seemed the principal landing- 
place — a bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated 
round it, roughly built, very narrow, and very light, lying 
upon the very top of the water, and just, in fact, as like 
canoes as the scene about resembled some still savage coun- 
try. Three boats were starting for the oyster fishery, 
manned each by four as buxom, blithe, and debonnaire 
wenches as you would wish to see. They had short petti- 
coats — your Nereides of all shores have — and straw hats, 
shaped like a man's. In the stern-sheets of each boat a 
venerable, ancient mariner held the tiller ; and as I ap- 
proached, the damsels, who were getting their clumsy oars 
inserted between the thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent 
of vociferous gabble, offering me a day's oyster-fishing, if I 
would go with them. They were evidently quite au fait 
to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare francs, in 
the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on the oyster-banks ; 
but I had determined to pass the day in another fashion. 
I wanted a sail on the bright, still bay, a walk in the pine- 
woods, and a glance at the surf tumbling in from the Bay 
of Biscay ; so I scrutinized the faces of two or three loung- 
ing boatmen, with as much reference to Lavater's principles 
as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking of 
the lot — a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently and slowly 
— we soon made a bargain, and were speedily afloat in the 
bean-cod looking canoe of which he was the skipper. I was 
gazing doubtfully at the heavy ores, and the expanse of 
water, when a flying cat's-paw made just a pretence of ruf- 
fling it. 

" Merci, le hon event /" said the fisherman. Up went a 



76 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

mast ; up went a liglit patch of thin, white canvass, and 
straightway the bubbles flew fast and faster by the gun- 
wale, and there arose a sweet gurgle from the cleaving 
bow. 

" You can see how fast we're going by the bottom," said 
the boatman. I leant over the gunwale, and looked down. 
Oh, the marvellous brightness of that shining sea! I 
gazed from the boat upon the sand through the water, 
almost as you might through the air upon the earth from a 
balloon. Grhost-like fish gleamed in the depths, and their 
shadows followed them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. 
Long flowing weeds, like rich green ribbons, waved and 
streamed in the gently running tidal current. You could 
see the white pebbles and shells — here a ridge of rocks, 
there a dark bed of sea-weed ; and now and then a great 
flat-fish, for all the world like a burnished pot-lid set in 
motion^ — went gleaming along the bottom. 

" Once," said the boatman, " all the bottom of this great 
bay that you are looking at was dry land, and there were 
cottages upon it, and an ancient chateau. That was the 
chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant, an old baron of these 
parts, a wicked man and a great magician, who had a fami- 
liar spirit, which came when he blew a horn, and who was 
able, by his sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, 
once he raised a storm he could not quell ; and it was that 
storm which made the Bay of Areachon : for the wind blew 
the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a snow-storm, 
and the sand-hills roiled before it ; and what the wind 
began, the coup de mer finished, and the ocean came bursting 
through the breach it had battered in the sand-ridges of 
the coast, and swallowed up the chateau, and drowned the 
magician, and there was an end of him." 

" Well," said I, " so be it ; he deserved his fate." 



LEGEND OF TEE BAEON OF CHATEL-MOBANT. 77 

" For many a year after the flood the baron had made," 
the boatman continued, " you could see, out of a boat, the 
pointed tops of the towers of the chateau below you, with 
the weather-cocks still pointing to the west, and the green 
sea-weed hanging to them, like pennons from a ship's 
vanes." 

" But I fear it is not to be seen now." 

" Oh ! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted 
away ; but the old men of the village have heard from their 
fathers that the fishermen only ventured there in calm 
summer weather, and in good day-light ; for, in the dark, 
look you, and when a Biscay wind was blowing, they said 
they heard the sounding of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and 
they saw his imp flying above them, and wailing like a hurt 
sea-bird." 

Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story ; and so 
my boatman recounted a rude, disjointed tale, which I have 
hitched, legendwise, into the following narrative : — 

The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his dim 
studio high up in the most seaward tower of the chateau of 
Chatel-morant. His hair and his beard were white, but his 
eyes were keen, and his cheeks as ruddy as the eyes and 
the cheeks of a young man. He had a furnace beside him,, 
with implements of projection, crucibles, and powders. On 
the table were astrological instruments, and the magic crys- 
tal, which his Familiar had given him, and in which — only, 
however, when the Familiar pleased — the baron could read 
the future ; but for every reading of the future, the baron 
was a year older — the Familiar had a year of his life. The 
baron was clothed in a long furred robe, and he wore red 
shoes, with peaked toes, as long again as his feet. His face 
was moody, and clouds went driving along his brow. He 
too]i up his instruments, and laid them down, and opened a 



78 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

big book full of spells and cantrips, and shut it ; then lie 
walked about the room ; and then he stopped and blew a 
silver whistle. 

Very prompt at the sound came an old man-^ — reverent 
and sorrowful looking — with a white wand ; for he was the 
seneschal of the chateau of Chatel-morant. 

" Your niece," said the baron," who comes hither from 
the town of Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I saw but 
yester even, — has she returned ?" 

" She went this morning, monseigneur," said the senes- 
chal ; " she has preparations to make ; for, G-od save the 
pretty child ! she is to be married on the day of Blessed 
St. John." 

The baron frowned ; for he was not an admirer of 
the saints, being quite, indeed, on the other side of the 
hedge. 

"Say the number of the day, and the name of the 
month," he replied, angrily ; '• and do not torment me with 
that shaveling jargon which they talk in the monastery of 
Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew at Bordeaux." 

The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied, par- 
ticularly upon religious subjects, crossed himself behind his 
back ; for he was a prudent man, and, owing to the absence 
of mind of the baron, who was always experimentalizing in 
the black art, managed, one way or other, to pick up so 
much as to make his place a tolerably profitable one. 

" Married !" said the baron ; " and to whom V 

" Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort — the stoutest 
mariner who sails out of the Graronne. He has got a ship 
of his own, now — the Semite Yierge ; and to-day he sails 
upon his first voyage, as far as Bayonne." 

" He sails to-day — so ; and the maiden's name — your 
niece's name — what is that ?" 



LEGEND OF THE BARON OF GHATEL-MOEANT. 79 

" Toinette, so please you, sir." 

" You may go." 

And go the seneschal did. wondering very much at the 
uncommon interest his master seemed to be taking in vul- 
gar, sublunary things. 

Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the room 
a long time in gloomy meditation. At length he sat down 
again, and said aloud : " There is no doubt of it — I am in 
love. That face haunts me ; Toinette's face is ever float- 
ing opposite to me. 'Tis an odd feeling ; I was never so 
before. But, since it is so, I must even have the maiden — 
she will cheer me — I love her face. I will send to-morrow 
to Bordeaux, as from her uncle ; and when she comes here, 
by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques Fort to 
the contrary notwithstanding !" 

" Wrong — quite wrong !" said a voice. 

The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting upon the 
arm of the chair close to him, the figure of a very thin dwarf, 
with a long, unearthly face, and fingers like hawks' claws. 
This was the imp — the baron's Familiar. 

" How, Klosso !" said Armand ; " you come without be- 
ing called ?" 

" Yes ; but you would have called me soon." 

" You know what I am thinking of — of Toinette. I 
love her — I must have her." 

" You will not have her." 

" Why so ?" 

" Because it is so decreed." 

" Klosso," said the baron, " I don't believe you. You 
know the future ; but you lie about it when you speak." 

" Will you, then," answered the demon, '' look into the 
crystal ; that can't lie. Come — it's only another year — give 
yourself a treat — come !" 



80 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

" I have given you many years already," said the baron, 
musing ; " look how grey my hair is !" 

" Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar, cer- 
tainly behaved as such. But the baron took no notice of 
his impertinence. He was dreadfully smitten by Toinette, 
and said he'd have a twelvemonths' worth of knowledge of 
futurity for her sake. The thin dwarf grinned, and then 
made a motion of relief, as one who saw before him the 
speedy end of a long, long watch. So he took the crystal, 
uttered, as may be supposed, some magic words ; and the 
baron looked upon the clear surface. 

'' Malediction !" he exclaimed, as he saw in the crystal 
a huge hearth, with pots on the fire, and poultry roasting 
before it, and Toinette, tending the cookery, and a stalwart 
fellow helping her clumsily. 

" That is Toinette !" cried the baron ; " but who is the 
rascal with her ?" 

" Her husband, Jacques Fort." 

" Curses on him !" 

Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round Toi- 
nette's waist, and kiss her so naturally, that he ground his 
teeth. 

" Domestic felicity," said the imp ; " a charming picture, 
baron — they're cooking the christening feast for young 
Jacques." 

The baron flung the crystal down. 

" Pay me," said the imp ; and he passed the bird-like 
hand over the baron's face, and each of his fingers drew a 
wrinkle. A shudder went over the sorcerer's frame, and 
then he breathed heavily, and looked wistfully at the imp. 
He was a year older. 

" Klosso !" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet, " I will 
fight fate !" 



LEGEND OF THE BAR ON OF GHATEL-MOBANT. 81 

" Better not," said Klosso. 

" Curse the future !" exclaimed the baron ; " I will alter 
the future, and give the lie to the crystal, as to you !" 

" If you try," replied the imp, coolly, " you will belong 
to me before the morning." 

" Silence, slave !" cried Armand, who was not a man to 
be put out of his way ; " you rule the winds — I rule you. 
Make the west wind blow." 

The imp raised his hand, and they heard the whistling 
of a strong, gusty wind, and the creaking of the weather 
cocks, as they all turned toward the sea. 

'' Stronger — stronger — stronger !" shouted the baron ; 
and the whistle became a roar, and the roar a howl ; and 
the castle shook and swayed in the blast. 

i' Good — good !" laughed the baron ; " something more 
than a puff there — ha ! ha ! — as Jacques Fort has found by 
this time on the deck of his new ship in the Bay of Biscay." 

The Familiar gently remarked that the weather was 
roughish, when the seneschal rushed into the room in a 
dreadful state of terror at the storm. 

" My lord — my lord !" he said, " we shall all be blown 
away ; the air is full of sand ; you would be suffocated out- 
side. The wind is tearing up the pines ; and oh, poor 
Jacques Fort is at sea", and drowned — drowned, by this time, 
to a certainty !" 

" Yes," said Armand, " I should rather think so. Toi- 
nette must take up with somebody else. — Stronger !" 

The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and in- 
stantly complied with. The tempest roared like the up- 
bursting of a volcano, and screeched and screamed through 
the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices, which it had burst in, 
and the loop-holes, like a hundred thousand devils' whistles. 

The seneschal fell on his knees. 
4* 



82 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

" Stronger still !" said tlie baron. 

And meantime what was Jacques Fort doing in his new 
ship % With every rag of canvass torn out of the bolt-ropes, 
the Sainte Vierge was flying on the top, as it seemed, of the 
driving spray, on to the breakers. Jacques was the only 
man left on deck — every one of the rest had been washed 
overboard, and were already sleeping in the sea ; and he 
knew that in a moment he would follow them. The stag- 
gering ship rose on the back of a mighty breaker ; and the 
captain knew that with its fall upon the beach his vessel 
wound be ground to powder. 

'' Oh, Toinette !" he murmured, as the ship was hove 
forward like a bolt from a bow, and then fell shooting into 
a creaming current of rushing water, while the sand-hills 
appeared right and left for a moment, and then were left 
astern. The last grand wave had burst the barrier, and the 
frail ship and the kneeling mariner were borne onward on 
the ridge of the advancing flood, which formed the lake of 
Arcachon. Jacques Fort saw a light, and steered towards 
it : it was the light in the baron's chamber at the chateau 
of Chatel-morant. 

There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron, his grey 
hair flying above his head, and ever shouting to the imp, 
" Stronger, Klosso — stronger !" And every time he used 
the words, the hurricane burst louder and louder upon the 
rocking turrets. And still Armand clung to the stone-work 
of the burst-in lattice, through which the flying sand drove 
in, and clustered in his robes and hair. 

And now the terrified domestics began to rush up to 
the chamber of the baron. 

" My lord, such a storm was never heard of !" 

" My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the wind!" 

" My lord, the end of the world is at hand !" 



LEGEND OF THE BARON OF GHATEL-MORANT. 83 

" Klosso !" sliouted the baron, " stronger !' 

As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap over 
them, and they heard the crash of a falling tower. The 
serving men and women grovelled in terror on the floor ; 
the baron clung by the window ; the imp, visible only to 
him, sat on the back of the arm-chair, as he had sat since 
his appearance. 

But hush ! Another sound, mingling with the roar of 
the wind, and deeper and more awful still. It rapidly in- 
Creased, and the baron found his face besprinkled with 
driving drops of water — they were salt. 

" My lord — my lord !" screamed the seneschal, sinking, 
as he spoke, at the baron's knees ; " my lord — the sea !" 

A cry was heard without ; the lights of the hamlet be- 
neath disappeared ; and then a shock from below made the 
chateau swing and rock, and white waves were all around 
them. 

" The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, " has burst the 
sand-banks,; the castle stands on low ground. We are all 
dead men — the sea — the sea !" 

The Baron Armand turned to Klosso : " Does he speak 
truth ?" 

" The worthy gentleman," said the imp, " is perfectly 
in the right ; 3'ou are all dead men ; and, Monseigneur le 
Baron, when you gave me last a year of your life, you gave 
me the last you had to give." 

Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves. Up, 
foot by foot, and yard by yard ; and still the baron stood 
erect amid the raving of the elements — his face as white as 
his hair, but his eyes as bright and keen as ever. 

" Klosso," he said, " I am yours ; and the future is the 
future." 

He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his head. 



84 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

" It will soon be out," said Klosso. 

Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer 
and nearer ; and he saw, even through the gloom and the 
driving spray, that it shone from a castle- turret, and he 
seized the tiller to change the course of the vessel ; but as 
he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the hur- 
ricane fell upon the seething flood like iron — ^heaved up one 
bristling, foaming sea, which caught the Sainte Vierge upon 
its crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light 
gleamed for a moment almost beneath him ; and Jacques, 
rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a prison, a £erce 
convulsed face, and staring eyes, and flying white hair ; and 
the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the sorcerer 
Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the 
face and form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the 
christening feast. 

The next instant the Sainte Vierge was borne over and 
over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom 
good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of all the gilt 
weather-cocks. 

The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place 
on the anniversary of the day which saw the chateau de 
Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of Arcachon. 

The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I 
plead guilty to have taken a few liberties, but " only with 
a view " (as the magistrate said when he put his neighbour 
into the stocks) — " only with a view towards improvement," 
occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and 
pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of 
the fishermen of the bay, and their neighbours, the shep- 
herds on stilts. The man of the sea held the men of the 
land cheap. The peasants were never out of the forests 
and the sand, he said ; the fishermen often went to Bor- 



LEGEND OE TEE BARON OF CHATEL-MOBANT. 85 

deaux, and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to 
Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts ; but as 
soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle, they 
were clapped upon a pair of sticks', and many a tumble, and 
many a broken face they caught, before they could use them 
easily. " They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, 
and they believe whatever you tell them. They are fright- 
ened out of their wits if you speak of witches or sorcer- 
ers ; but we know that all these old tales are nothing but 
nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to 
Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, 
that in the winter time the fishermen pursued their occupa- 
tion in the bay in such boats as that in which I was sail- 
ing ; and that in summer they went out into the Atlantic ; 
but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and never, 
if they could help it, stayed out a night. 

This kind of conversation brought us tolerably well to 
the narrow passage, all fenced with intricate sand-banks, 
which leads to the open sea. A white, graceful lighthouse 
rose above the sand-banks on our right, into which the 
pine-woods were stretching in long, finger-like projections ; 
and the boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow, ma- 
jestic heave which the swell without communicated to the 
shallow water within the bar, assured me that if we went 
further, the surf would prevent our landing at all. We 
ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing her up high and 
dry, plunged into, not the green-wood, but the black-wood 
tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine 
bright sand, bound here and there together by carpets 
of long bent grass, and the air was sickly with the peculiar 
resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree fermenting and 
distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered 
two of the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the 



86 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard the 
"blows of the axe echoing in the hot silence of the mid-day, 
and made our way to whence the sound proceeded, speedily 
descrying the workman, perched upon a slight bending lad- 
der, gashing the tree. This man, and, indeed, all his breth- 
ren whom I saw, were miserable-looking creatures — their 
features sunken and animal-like — their hair matted in 
masses over their brows — their feet bare, and their cloth- 
ing painfully wretched. Their calling is as laborious as 
it is monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge — a 
ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other — into the re- 
cesses of the pine-wood, repeating the same process to every 
tree. The ladder in question is very peculiar, consisting 
of a single strip of elastic wood, about ten feet long, 
dotted with knobs cut plain upon one side, for the foot 
to rest upon, and thus serving instead of rounds or steps. 
This primitive ladder is sliced away towards the top, so 
as to rest more commodiously upon the tree. When in 
use, it is placed almost perpendicularly, and the workman 
ascends it like a monkey, never touching the tree, but 
keeping the ladder in its position by the action of his 
legs, which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round 
and round the bending wood, and keep it in its place, even 
when the top, laid perhaps against the rounded side of the 
trunk, appears to be slipping off every moment. 

" Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, " I would 
rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go up there, at 
any rate." 

The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used ex- 
cept with naked feet. The instrument with which he cut 
the tree was as sharp as a razor, and required long practice 
to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered that the 
gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were 



THE WITCHES OF THE LANDES. 87 

marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. 
Here and there, indeed, you found one which had succumb- 
ed to the process, rotted, and fallen ; but the majority 
seemed in very good case, nevertheless. 

" Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than 
half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular 
stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately. '• That tree is 
more than a hundred years old ; and that is not a bad age 
for either a man or a fir." 

Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards 
the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, 
was as slippery as ice, except where we plunged into fine 
hot sand, half way to the knees. Every now and then we 
crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it a 
perfectly bald spot in the woods — a circular patch of pure 
white sand — in certain lights, you might have taken it for 
snow. All around were the black pines ; but not a blade 
or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald white 
patch. You could find neither stone nor shell — nothing 
but subtle, powdery sand — every particle as minute and as 
uniform as those in an hour-glass. 

" That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first 
of those singular little saharas — " that is a devil's garden." 

" And what does he grow there ?" I asked. The man 
lowered his voice : " It is in these spots of fine white sand 
that all the sorcerers and witches, and warlocks in France 
— ay, and I have heard in the whole world — meet to sing, 
and dance, and frolic ; and the devil sits in the middle. So, 
at least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly 
tone — " so the peasants say." 

" And do you say it?" 

"Well, I do not know. There's witches, for certain, in 
the Landes, — old women — but whether they come flying out 



88 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

here to dance round the devil or no — the peasants say so 
for certain — Tbut I don't think I believe it." 

" I should hope you didn't." 

" They enchant people, though ; there's no doubt of that. 
They can give you the fever so bad that no doctor can set 
you to rights again ; and they can curse a place, and keep 
the grass from growing on it ; but I don't believe they fly 
on broomsticks, or dance round the devil." 

" Are there any young women witches ?" 

" Well, I do hear of one or two. Mais elles de sont pas 
bienforter. It is only the old ones make good witches, and 
the uglier they are the better." 

" Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you ?" 

The man paused and looked at me with a puzzled ex- 
pression. " Our little Marie," he said, " has fits ; and my 
wife does say — " Here he stopped. " No, monsieur," he 
said, " I do not believe in witches." 

But he did, as firmly as King Jamie ; only now and 
then, in the bright sunlight, and with an incredulous per- 
son, he thought he did not. 

On, however, we went mile after mile, over the slippery 
ground, and in the shadow of the pines, ere we saw gleaming 
ahead, the region of fine sand, and heard — although the 
little breeze which blew was off the shore — the low thun- 
der of the " coup de mer " — the breaking surf of the ocean. 
Presently, passing through a zone of stunted furze, and 
dry thin-bladed grass, we emerged into the most fearful 
desert I ever looked upon — a sea of heights and hollows, 
dells and ridges, long slopes and precipitous ravines — all 
of them composed of pure white, hot, drifting sand. The 
labour of walking was excessive. I longed for the stilts I 
had seen the day before. Every puff of the breeze sent the 
sand, like dry pungent powder, into our faces, and sometimes 



TEE SURF OF THE BAY OF BISCAY. 89 

we could see it reft from the peaks of the ridges, and blown 
like clouds of dust far out into the air. All at once mj 
guide touched my arm, " Voila donc^ voila ! des clievaux 
sauvages /" It certainly only required a breed of wild 
•» horses to make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia ; 
I nd I eagerly turned to see the steeds of the desert, just 
1 ucceeding in catching a glimpse of a ruck of lean, brown, 
haggy, ponies, disappearing round a hill, in a whirlwind of 
and. There is, undoubtedly, something romantic and 
Mazeppaish in the notion of wild horses of the desert ; 
but stern truth compels me to add, that a more stunted, 
ragged lot of worthless brutes, not bigger than donkeys, 
than were the troop of desert steeds of the Landes which 
I had the fortune to see, could be nowhere met with. My 
fisherman told me that, when caught and tamed, they were 
useful in carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways ; 
but that there were not more vicious, stubborn brutes in 
nature than Landes ponies. 

A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further 
episodical visions of desert steeds, but enlivened by the fast 
increasing thunder of the surf, at length brought us to its 
foam. Winding through a succession of sand valleys, we 
climbed a steepish bank, sinking to our knees at every step, 
and from this last ridge beheld a long, gentle slope, as per- 
fectly smooth as though the sand had been smoothed by a 
ruler — fining away down to the white creaming sheets of 
water which swept, with the loud peculiar hiss of the agi- 
tated sea, far up and down the level banks. The full force 
of the great heaving swells was expended in breakers, roar- 
ing half a mile from the land ; and from their uttermost 
verge to the tangled heaps of seaweed washed high and dry 
upon the beach, was a vast belt of foaming water, extending 
away on either hand in a perfectly straight line as far as 



90 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless expanse of 
water from the houseless expanse of land. The scene was 
very solemn. There was not even a sea-bird overhead — not 
an insect crawling or humming along the ungrateful sand. 
Only the grand organ of the surf made its incessant music, 
and the sharp thin rustle of the moving sand came fitfully 
upon the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat, 
the continually shifting sand gradually rose around me, as 
the waters rose round the chateau of Chatel-morant. Had 
I stayed there long enough, only my head would have been 
visible, like the head of the sphinx. 

I dined that day at the hotel, tete-a-tete with a young 
priest, who was returning to Bordeaux from a visit to his 
brother, one of the officers of the Preventive Service, 
whose lonely barracks are almost the only human habita- 
tions which break the weary wilderness stretching from the 
Adour to the Grironde. One would have thought that there 
could be but little smuggling on such a coast ; but the Dua- 
niers are always autorites, and the waves of the Gulf of 
Gascony could not. of course, break on French ground with- 
out autorites to help them. With respect to the priest, 
however, he had one of the finest heads and the most per- 
fectly chiselled features I ever saw. The pale high brow — 
the keen bright eyes, with remarkably long eye-lashes — the 
tenuity of the cartilage of the nose, and the perfect delicacy 
of the mouth — all told of intellect in no common develop- 
ment ; while the meek sweetness of the noble face had some- 
thing in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination an 
aureole round that head, and you had the head of a youth- 
ful martyr, or a saint canonized for early virtues. There 
was devotion and aspiration in every line of the counte- 
nance — a meek, mild gentleness, beautifully in keeping with 
every word he uttered, and every movement he made. I 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 91 

was the more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not 
an uglier, meaner, nor, I _ will add, dirtier, set of worthy 
folks in all the world, than the priests of France. Nine 
times out often, they are big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking 
men, with mottled faces, and skins which do not take kindly 
to the razor. The arrangements about the neck show a de- 
cided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and 
vater. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures 
are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and — barring, of 
course, their scholastic and theological knowledge— I found 
the majority with whom I conversed stupid, illiterate, and 
unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste was the re- 
verse of all this. With manners as polished as those of 
any courtly ahhe of the courtly old regime^ there was a per- 
fect atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about 
my companion, and his conversation was delightfully easy, 
animated, and graceful. I do not know if my friend be- 
longed to the College of Jesus ; but, if he did, he was cut 
out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplo- 
macy. - ^ 

We talked of the strange part of the world I was visit- 
ing, and I found he knew the people and the country well. 
I mentioned the submerged chateau and its legend, and he 
replied that it was an undoubted fact, that both chateaux 
and villages had been overwhelmed — both by the inburst- 
ing of the sea, and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand 
down into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of 
their ancient beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was more 
dangerous than the water. Often and often the coast-guard 
stations had to be dug out after a gale ; and he believed 
that, on one occasion, a small church near the mouth of the 
Grironde had been overwhelmed to such a height that only 
a few feet of the spire and weathercock were left apparent. 



92 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

The story put me forcibly in mind of the remarkably heavy 
fall of snow experienced by my old friend, Baron Munchau- 
sen ; but, for all that, I see no reason why it should not be 
literally correct. The pines, the priest informed me, were 
the saving of the country, by fixing the unstable soil, and 
the Grovernment had engineers busily engaged in laying out 
plantations all along the coast — the object being to get the 
trees down to high-water mark. I mentioned the supersti- 
tions of the people. 

" Alas !" said the priest, " What you have heard is per- 
fectly true. We are improving a little, perhaps. The 
boys and girls we get to come to school are taught to laugh 
at the notion of their old grandmothers being witches, and 
in another generation or two there will be a great change." 

" And how do your witches work ?" I asked. " As ours 
in England used to do — by spell and charm ?" 

" Precisely. They are said to make clay figures of their 
victims, and to stick pins in them, or bake them in a fire ; 
and then they have rhymes and cabalistical incantations, 
and are greatly skilled in the magic power of herbs. The 
worst of it is, that a year seldom passes without an outrage 
on some poor old woman. A lout, who thinks himself be- 
witched by such a person, will attack her and beat her ; and 
occasionally a bullet has been fired at night through the 
cottage-window." 

" The Landes people have, or had, other queer notions, 
as well as the witch ones ?" 

" Oh, yes ! They long held out against potatoes, which, 
they said, gave them apoplexy, and they have only lately 
begun to milk their cows." 

" Why so ? As a pastoral people, they ought to bo 
great in butter and cheese." 

" On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard or 



DO THE LANDES COWS GIVE MILK? 93 



goose-grease instead. Indeed, for centuries and centuries, 
they religiously believed that Landes cows gave no milk." 

" But was not the experiment ever tried V 

" Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go to a 
Landes farmer, and urge him to milk his cows. ' Landes 
cows give no milk,' would be the answer. ' Will you let 
me try V would, perhaps, be replied. The Landes man 
would have no objection ; and the cow would be brought 
and milked before him." 

" Well, seeing that would convince Hm." 

" Ah, you don't know the Landes people — not in the 
least ; why, the farmer would say, ' Ay, there are a few 
drops, perhaps ; but it's not worth the trouble of taking. 
Our fathers never milked their cows, and they were as wise 
as we are.' And next day he would have relapsed into the 
old creed, that Landes cows never gave milk at all." 

I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers 
progressed — whether they could, as one sometimes hears, 
keep up with a horse at the gallop ; and found, as I expect- 
ed, that six or seven miles an hour was as much as they 
ever managed to achieve. The priest went on succinctly 
to sketch the costume and life of the people. When in 
regular herding dress, the shepherd of the Landes appears 
one uncouth mass of dirty wool. On his body he wears a 
fleece, cut in the fashion of a rude paletot, and sometimes 
flung over one shoulder, like a huzzar's jacket. His thighs 
and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and greaves 
of the same material. On his feet he wears sabots and 
coarse worsted socks, covering only the heels and the instep. 
His remaining clothing generally consists of frayed and 
tattered homespun cloth ; and altogether the appearance of 
the man savours very strongly of that of a fantastically 
costumed scarecrow. 



94 ._ GLABET AND OLIVES. 

So attired, then, witli a gourd containing some wretched 
piquette hung across his shoulders, and provided with a 
store of rye-bread, baked, perhaps, three weeks before, a 
few dry sardines, and as many onions or cloves of garlic, 
the Landes shepherd sallies forth into the wilderness. He 
reckons himself a rich man, if his employer allows him, 
over and above his food, sixty francs a-year. From the 
rising to the setting of the sun, he never touches the ground, 
shuffling backwards and forwards on his stilts, or leaning 
against a pine, plying the never-pausing knitting-needle. 
Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide ; sometimes 
he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling his stilts, and pro- 
ducing his flint and steel, he has soon a rousing fire of fir- 
branches, when, gathering his sheep-skins round him, he 
makes himself comfortable for the night, his only annoy- 
ances being the mosquitoes and the dread of the cantrips 
of some unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a 
glimpse of him in the moonlight, as she rides buxomly on 
her besom to a festal dance in a devil's garden. 

" Yet still," continued the young priest, '' they are a 
good, honest-hearted, open-handed people. For their wild, 
solitary life they have a passionate love. The Landes 
peasant, taken from his dreary plains, and put down in the 
richest landscape of France, would pine for his heath, and 
sand, and woods, like a Swiss for his hills. But they sel- 
dom leave their home here in the forests. They live and 
die in the district where they were born, ignorant and care- 
less of all that happens beyond their lonely bounds. France 
may vibrate with revolution and change — the shepherds of 
the Landes feel no shock, take no heed, but pursue the 
daily life of their ancestors, perfectly happy and contented 
in their ignorance, driving their sheep, or notching their 
trees in the wilderness," 



CHAPTER VI. 

UP THE GARONNE THE OLD WARS ON ITS BANKS^ITS BOATS AND ITS 

SCENERY AGEN JASMIN, THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS SOUTHERN 

COOKERY AND GARLIC THE BLACK PRINCE IN A NEW LIGHT A DREARY 

PILGRIMAGE TO PAU. 

A SOLEMN imprecation is on record, uttered against 
the memory of the man who invented getting up by 
candle-light ; to which some honest gentleman, fond of long 
lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the 
man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may 
think of the latter commination, I suppose we shall all 
agree in the propriety of the former. At all events, no one 
ever execrated with more sincere good will the memory of 
the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out than I 
did, when a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bed- 
room, and the knuckles of — one would call him boots at 
home — rattled at the door, while his hoarse voice pro- 
claimed, •' Trois heures et demV^'' — a most unseasonable and 
absurd hour certainly ; but the Agen steamer, having the 
strong stream of the G-aronne to face, makes the day as long 
as possible ; and starts from the bridge — and a splendid 
bridge it is — of Bordeaux, crack at half-past four. There 
was no help for it ; and so, leaving my parting compliments 
for my worthy host, I soon found myself following the truck 



96 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

which conveyed my small baggage, modestly stuck into the 
interstices of an Alp-like pile of rickety boxes and faded 
valiseS;, the property of an ancient commis voyageur^ my 
fellow-lodger ; and pacing, for the last time, the stately 
quays of the city of the Black Prince. 

Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat pier was 
crowded and bustling enough. Men with lanterns and lug- 
gage were rushing breathlessly about — and gentlemen 
with brushy black beards were kissing each other with true 
French effusion — while a crowd of humble vintagers were 
being stowed away in the fore part of the boat. On the 
pier I observed a tent, and looking in, found myself in a 
genuine early breakfast shop, where I was soon accommo- 
dated with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal. The morn- 
ing was bitter cold ; and a magnificent bowl of smoking 
coffee, bread hot from the oven, and just a nip of cognac, at 
the kind suggestion of the jolly motherly -looking old lady 
in no end of shawls, who presided over the establishment, 
and who pronounced it " Bon pour Vestomac^ du monsieur 
le voyageury Then aboard ; and after the due amount of 
squabbling, bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we launch- 
ed forth upon the black, rushing river. 

A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an 
autumnal morning, watching the pale negative lighting of 
the east — then the spreading of the dim approaching day — 
stars going out, and the outlines of the hills coming in — 
and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid 
the grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from 
black to yellow — the genuine pea-souppy hue — and bit by 
bit the whole landscape came clearly into stark-staring view 
— but still cold and dreary-looking — until the cheering fire 
stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In 
half an hour the valley of the G-aronne was a blaze of warmth 



THE LANDSCAPE- OF THE GARONNE. 97 

and cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely 
beautiful, seen under such auspices, than the fleet of mar- 
ket-boats through which we threaded our way, and which 
were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I dismiss the 
mere vegetable crafts : but the fruit-boats would have made 
Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled — 
clustered — heaped over — with mountains of grapes bigger 
than big gooseberries — peaches and apricots, like thousands 
of ladies' cheeks — plums like pulpy, juicy cannon-balls — and 
melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not 
understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush 
that below ; but I suppose there is a knack in piling. At 
all events, the boats were loaded to the gunwales with the 
luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking globules, purple and 
yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by the 
grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked 
like floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appear- 
ed a wine-boat — one man at the head, one at the stern, 
and a Pyrenees of wine casks between them — while here 
and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge, 
towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a 
platform amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, 
and heavier than the mast. 

And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony 
to our right, and Guienne to our left. 

Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne, the Ga- 
ronne is not unlike the tamer portions of the Rhine. The 
green vine-clothed banks rise into precipitous ridges, whiten- 
ed by streaks of limestone cliff, cottages nestling in the 
crevices and ravines, and an occasional feudal tower crown- 
ing the topmost peak. The villages passed near the water's 
edge are doleful-looking places^, ruinous and death-like ; 
whitish, crumbling houses, with outside shutters invariably 



98 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

closed ; empty and lonesome streets, and dilapidated piers^ 
tlie stakes worn and washed away by the constant action of 
the river. Take Langon and Castres as specimens of these 
places : two drearier towns — more like sepulchres than towns 
— never nurtured owls and bats. They seem to be still la- 
menting the old English rule, and longing for the jolly times 
when stout English barons led the Gascon knights and men- 
at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and Angoumais. 
Occasionally, however, we have a more promising and pleas- 
ing looking town. These, for the most part, are tolerably 
high up the river, and possess some curious and characteris- 
tic features. You will descry them, for instance, towering 
up from a mass of perpendicular cliffs ; the open-galleried 
and bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and pillars, 
rising from the rock ; flights of stairs from the water's edge 
disappearing among the buildings, and strips of terraced 
gardens laid out on the narrow shelves and ledges of the 
precipice. 

The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on both 
sides of the river ; and if the red mossy stone could speak, 
many a tale of desperate siege and assault it could, no doubt, 
tell — for these strongholds were perpetually changing 
masters in the wars between the French and the English 
and Grascons ; and often, when peace subsisted between the 
crowns, were they attacked and harried by moss-trooping 
expeditions led by French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by Eng- 
lish Christies of the Clinthill. While, then, the steamer is 
slowly plodding her way up stream, turning reach after reach^ 
and showing us another and yet another pile of feudal ruins, 
let us sit down here with Froissart beneath the awning, and 
try to gain some inkling into the warlike customs of the 
times when these thick-walled towers — no doubt built, as 
honest King James remarked, by gentlemen who were 



FREAKS OF THE OLD WARS IN GUIENNE. 99 

thieves in their hearts — alternately displayed the Lion 
Kampant and the Fleur-de-Lis. 

In all the fighting of the period — I refer generally to 
the age of the Black Prince — there would appear to have 
been a great deal of chivalric courtesy and forbearance 
shown on either side. It was but seldom that a place was 
defended a outrance. If the besiegers appeared in very 
formidable force, the besieged usually submitted with a very 
good grace, marched honourably out, and had their turn next 
time. I cannot find that there was anything in the nature 
of personal animosity between the combatants, but there 
was great wantonness of life ; and though few men were 
killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently made 
the victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness, the manner 
of his death being suggested by the circumstances of the 
moment. For instance, on one occasion, an English and 
Gascon garrison was besieged in Auberoche — the French 
having " brought from Toulouse four large machines, which 
cast stones into the fortress night and day, which stones de- 
molished all the roofs of the towers, so that none within the 
walls dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms on the 
ground-floor." In this strait, a " varlet" undertook to carry 
letters, requesting succour, to the Earl of Derby, at Bor- 
deaux. He was unsuccessful in getting through the French 
lines, and being arrested, the letters were found upon him, 
hung round his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and 
foot, inserted in one of the stone-throwing machines. His 
cries for mercy all unheeded, the engine made two or three 
of its terrific swings, and then launched the screaming 
" varlet" into the air, right over the battlements of Aube- 
roche, " so that he fell quite dead amid the other varlets, 
who were much terrified at it 5" and presently, the French 
knights, riding up to the walls, shouted to the defenders : 



.100 GLARET AND OLIVES. 

" Grentlemen, inquire of your messenger wliere he found the 
Early of Derby, seeing that he has returned to you so speed- 
ily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and took signal 
vengeance. The battle, which Eroissart tells in his best 
manner, resulted in the capture by the English of nine 
Erench viscounts, and " so many barons, squires, and knights, 
that there was not a man-at-arms among the English that 
had not for his share two or three." 

The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both 
upon the English and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, 
who transferred their services from one side to the other, 
were, however, miserable assassins, thirsting for blood. 
These men were frequently Bretons ; and, says Eroissart, 
" the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire." 
With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chron- 
icler, " there was a certain captain, who performed many ex- 
cellent deeds of arms, namely, Aimerigot Marcel, a Limou- 
sin squire, attached to the side of the English." One of 
the " deeds of arms " performed under this worthy's aus- 
pices is narrated as follows: — 

" Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only 
twelve companions, to seek adventures. They took the 
road towards Aloise, near St. Eleur, which has a handsome 
castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the castle 
was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding 
silently towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting 
upon the branch of a tree without side of the castle. The 
Breton, who shot extraordinary well with a cross-bow, 
says to him, ' Would you like to have that porter killed at 
a shot ?' — ' Yea,' replied Aimerigot ; ' and I hope you 
will do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he 
drives into the porter's head, and knocks him down. The 
porter feeling himself mortally wounded, regains the gate. 



JASMIN— THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS. IQl 

which he attempts to shut, Tbnt cannot, and falls down 
dead." 

This delectable anecdote, Froissart — probably as kind- 
hearted a man by nature as any of his age — tells as the 
merest matter of course, and without a word of compunc- 
tion or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and lettered 
canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling 
of blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotch- 
ing of a rat or a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he 
record the deaths of dukes, and viscounts, and even simple 
knights and squires, who have done their devoirs gallantly ; 
but as to the life-blood of the varlets — the villains — the 
kernes — the villagios — the Jacques Bonhommes — foh ! the 
red puddle — let it flow ; blood is only blood when it gushes 
from the veins of a gentleman ! 

The evening was closing, and the miist stealing over the 
Garonne, when we came alongside the pier at Agen. A 
troop of diligence conducteurs and canal touters immedi- 
ately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for Tou- 
louse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of 
the number who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up 
through the sultry evening — for we are now getting into 
the true south — to the very comfortable hotel looking upon 
the principal square of the town. One of my objects in 
stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very re- 
markable man — Jasmin, the peasant-poet of Provence and 
Languedoc — the " Last of the Troubadours," as, with more 
truth than is generally to be found in ad captandum 
designations, he terms himself, and is termed by the wide 
circle of his admirers ; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics 
are written in the patois of the people, and that patois is 
the still almost unaltered Langite d'' Oc — the tongue of the 
chivalric minstrelsy of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour 



102 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

in anotlier sense than that of merely availing himself of the 
tongue of the m^nestrels. He publishes, certainly — con- 
forming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern 
times ; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of 
his poems. Standing bravely up before an expectant as- 
sembly of perhaps a couple of thousand persons — the hot- 
blooded and quick-brained children of the South — the 
modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his 
lays, working both himself and his applauding audience into 
fits of enthusiasm an d excitement, which, whatever may be 
the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman finds it diffi- 
cult to conceive or account for. The raptures of the New 
Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and 
cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has receiv- 
ed. At a recitation given shortly before my visit at Auch, 
the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out 
of their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and 
flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the 
editors of the local papers next morning assured him. in 
floods of flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, 
future ages would acknowledge the " divinity" of a Jasmin ! 
There is a feature, however, about these recitations, which 
is still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits of 
popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last enter- 
tainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyre- 
nean cities (I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. 
Every sous of this went to the public charities ; Jasmin will 
not accept a stiver of money so earned. With a species of 
perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted chivalric feel- 
ing, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit for 
money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, 
perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France, de- 
lighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging many 



JASMm-THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOUBS, 103 

thousands of francs into every poor-box wliich he passes, the 
poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to 
the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily 
toil, as a barber and hair-dresser. It will be generally ad- 
mitted, that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic 
a nature as this, is no ordinary poetaster. One would be 
puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute 
disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer 
downwards ; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice 
of Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fer- 
vour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Trou- 
badours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes 
to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. 
"Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; 
and it really seems difficult to assign any satisfactory rea- 
son for a man refusing to live upon the exercise of the finer 
gifts of his intellect, and throwing himself for his bread 
upon the daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery. 
Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. 
I was speedily directed to his abode, near the open Place 
of the town, and within earshot of the rush of the Garonne ; 
and in a few moments I found myself pausing before the 
lintel of the modest shop inscribed, Jasmin, Perruqmer, 
Coiffeur de jeunes Gens. A little brass basin dangled 
above the threshold ; and, looking through the glass, I saw 
the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neigh- 
bour. Now. I had come to see and pay my compliments to 
a poet ; and'there did appear to me to be something strange- 
ly awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, 
to some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an in- 
dividual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and un- 
elevated a species of performance. I retreated, uncertain 
what to do, and waited outside until the shop was clear. 



1Q4 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

Three words explained ttie nature of my visit ; and Jas- 
min received me with a species of warm courtesy, which was 
very peculiar and very charming — dashing at once, with the 
most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a 
sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and 
his own in particular — upon the French language in gen- 
eral, and the iDatois of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, 
and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built and 
strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large, massive 
head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two pierc- 
ingly bright black eyes, and features which would be 
heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the con- 
tinual play of the facial muscles, which were continually 
sending a series of varying expressions across the swarthy 
visage. Two sentences of his conversation were quite suf- 
ficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which 
struck me was the utter absence of all the mock- modesty, 
and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed 
by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings 
or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such 
flimsy hypocrisy. '' God only made four Frenchmen poets !" 
he burst out with ; " and their names are Corneille, Lafon- 
taine, Beranger, and Jasmin !" Talking with the most im- 
passioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of 
gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of 
civilization upon language and manners as being fatal to 
all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon 
earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far remov- 
ed from cities, salons^ and the clash and din of social influ- 
ences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, 
who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they 
wished to make poetry, but because they were joyous and 
true. Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of 



JASMIN— TEE LAST OF TEE TEOUBADOUBS. 105 

literature, and all such institutions. Jasmin denounced as 
the curse and the hane of true poetry. They had spoiled, 
he said, the very French language. You could no more 
write poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical 
figures. The language had been licked, and kneaded, and 
tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and 
minced, and ruled square, and chipped — (I am trying to 
give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used) — and 
pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all 
honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere u^navail- 
ahle and contemptible jargon. It might do for cheating 
agents de change on the Bourse — for squabbling politicians 
in the Chambers — for mincing dandies in the salons — for 
the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse drolleries 
of Palais Royal farces ; but for poetry the French language 
was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere 
faiseurs de phrase — thinking about words, and not feeling. 
" No, no," my Troubadour continued ; " to write poetry, 
you must get the language of a rural people — a language 
talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains 
— a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and 
dictionary-makers, and journalists : you must have a lan- 
guage like that which your own Burns (whom I read of in 
Chateaubriand) used ; or like the brave old mellow tongue 
unchanged for centuries — stuffed with the strangest, quaint- 
est, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words, full of 
shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and 
familiar, homely and graceful — the language which I write 
in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating 
men of science or jack-a-dandy litter at eures^'' 

The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the 
ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing 
at every pore in his body, so rapid, vehement, and loud was 



106 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

his enunciation of them. Warming more and more as he 
went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite 
pieces, every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping 
from French to iiatois^ and from patois to French, and some- 
times spluttering them out, mixed up pell-mell together. 
Hardly pausing to take breath, he rushed about the shop 
as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and drawers, 
piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing me out a pas- 
sage here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, 
a passage there which showed how perfectly the critic had 
mistaken the scope of his poetic philosophy, and exclaim- 
ing, with the most perfect naivete^ how mortifying it was 
for men of original and profound genius to be misconceived 
and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of 
journalists. There was one review of his works, published 
in a London " Kecueil^'' as he called it, to which Jasmin 
referred with great pleasure. A portion of it had been 
translated, he said, in the preface to a French edition of 
his works ; and he had most of the highly complimentary 
phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in the 
Tintinum-; and he looked dubiously at me when I con- 
fessed that I had never heard of the organ in question. 
" Pourtant^'^ he said, "^e vous le ferai voir ;" and I soon 
perceived that Jasmin's Tintinum was no other than the 
Athenmum. 

In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to 
which the poet speedily introduced me, his sister, a meek, 
smiling woman, whose eyes never left her brother, follow- 
ing him as he moved with a beautiful expression of love 
and pride in his glory, received me with simple cordiality. 
The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and 
trophies, awarded by cities and distinguished persons, liter- 
ary and political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few 



JASMIN— THE LAST OF THE TliOUBADOUBS. 107 

of these are of a nature to make any man most legiti- 
mately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and silver vases, 
laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a whole 
museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic 
and laconic legends as — ^^ Au Poete^ Les Jeunes filles de 

Toulouse reconnair antes ." The number of garlands 

of immortelles^ wreaths of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the 
name), laurel, and so forth, utterly astonished me. Jasmin 
preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens ; and each 
symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. 
One was given by the ladies of such a town ; another was 
the gift of the prefect's wife of such a department. A 
handsome full-length portrait had been presented to the 
poet by the municipal authorities of Agen ; and a letter 
from M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, 
avowed the writer's belief that the Troubadour of the 
Garonne was the Homer of the modern world. M. Jasmin 
wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and has several 
valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex- 
king and different members of the Orleans family. 

I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of 
my interview with M. Jasmin, because he is really the popu- 
lar poet — the peasant poet of the south of France — the Burns 
of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His songs are in 
the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage 
firesides. Their subjects are always rural, naive^ and full of 
rustic pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, 
he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he can no 
more help it than can the birds in the trees. Translations 
into French of his main poems have appeared ; and compo- 
sitions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated 
pathos and humour it would be difficult to find. Jasmin 
writes from a teeming brain and a beaming heart ; and there 



108 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

is a warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant 
march of song about his poems, which carry you away in 
the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing. 
I speak of course from the French translations, and I can 
well conceive that they give hut a comparatively faint trans- 
cript of the pith and power of the original. The 2^(^tois in 
which these poems are written is the common peasant lan- 
guage of the south-west. It varies in some slight degree in 
different districts, hut not more than the broad Scotch of 
Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect 
itself, it seems in the main to be a species of cross between 
old French and Spanish — holding, however, I am assured, 
rather to the latter tongue than the former, and constituting 
a bold, copious, and vigorous speech, very rich in its colour- 
ing, full of quaint words and expressive phrases, and espe- 
cially strong in all that relates to the language of the passions 
and affections. 

I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin 
might have lasted, for he seemed by no means likely to tire 
of talking, and his talk was too good and too curious not to 
be listened to with interest ; but the sister, who had left us 
for a moment, coming back with the intelligence that there 
was quite a gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily 
took my leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and 
immediately thereafter dashing into all that appertains to 
curling-irons, scissors, razors, and lather, with just as much 
apparent energy and enthusiasm as he flung into his rhap- 
sodical discourse on poetry and language. 

Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in 
the cookery at the table cVlwtes ; and in the gradually in- 
creasing predominance of oil and garlic, you recognise the 
kitchen influences of the sweet south. Grarlic is a word of 
fear — of absolute horror to a great proportion of our country- 



GARLia 109 

men, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. 
I admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon 
inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant ; indeed, I well 
remember being once driven from the table in a small gas- 
thoff 2X Strasbourg by the fumes of a particularly strong 
sausage. Now, however, I think I should know better. A 
•relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many acquired tastes 
which grow upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from 
the first garlicky dish with dismay ; the second does not 
appear quite so bad ; you muster up courage, and taste the 
third. A strange flavour certainly — nasty, too — -but still 
— not irredeemably bad — there is a lurking merit in the 
sensation — and you try the experiment again and again — 
speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touch- 
ing the '"'petit point cUail^'' which Gascons love and Scots- 
men do not despise. Indeed, your friends will probably 
think it well if you content yourself with the petit pointy 
and do not give yourself up to a height of seasoning such as 
that which I saw in the s,alle a manger at Agen, drive two 
English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in the 
South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if 
but in self-defence, to do the same ; while the oil eating is 
equally infectious : you enter Provence, able just to stand a 
sprinkling upon your salad — you depart from it, thinking 
nothing of devouring a dish of cabbage, chopped up, and 
swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all through 
the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wan- 
dering through the dark and narrow streets of Agen — for 
we have now reached the point where the eaves of the roofs 
are made to project so far as to cast a perpetual shade upon 
the thoroughfare beneath — I came upon a group of tiny 
urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration 
of a row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window. 



110 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

" Tiens^'' said one. " Oest de Vliuile ga — de Vhuile 
claire — qa doit etre Ion sv) le pain — ga /" The little gour- 
mand looked upon oil just as an English urchin would upon 
treacle. 

It was from the heights ahove Agen — studded with the 
plum-trees which produce the famous 'prunes d'Agen — that 
I caught my first glimpse of the Pyrenees. I was sitting 
watching the calm uprising of the light smoke from the leaf- 
covered town beneathj and marking the grand panorama 
around me — the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the 
plum and fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the 
bursting beds of huge melons and pumpkins — when, extend- 
ing my gaze over the vast expanse of champagne country, 
watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I saw — 
shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far 
bright air — faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a 
blue vision of sierrated and jagged mountain peaks^ stretch- 
ing along the horizon from east to west, forming the central 
portion of the great chain of peaks running from Perpignan 
to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred and twenty 
miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they stood, 
— Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding — one of 
the great landmarks of the world : a natural boundary for 
ever ; dividing a people from a people, a tongue from a 
tongue, and a power from a power ! 

Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient 
castle of Agen. Its ruins were demolished, with those of a 
cathedral, at the time of the Revolution ; but its memory 
recalls a very curious story, developing the true character 
of the Black Prince, and showing that, chivalrous and daring 
as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the 
braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World 
could occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus 



THE BLACK FRINGE IN A NEW LIGHT. \ \ \ 

it fell out: — In the year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine an- 
nounced that he would raise a hearth-tax throughout 
Gruienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular, and the 
Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal 
Superior of the Prince ; and the King sent, by two commis- 
sioners — a lawyer and a knight — a summons to Edward, to 
appear and answer before the Parliament of Paris. The 
emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux, 
told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black 
Prince heard in silence, and then, after a long pause, he 
sternly and solemnly replied : " Willing shall we be to at- 
tend on the appointed day at Paris, since the King of 
France sends for us ; but it will be with the helmet on our 
head, and sixty thousand men behind us." 

The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their heads 
to the ground. After the Prince had retired, they were 
assured that they would get no better answer ; and so, after 
dinner, they set forth on the road to Toulouse, where the 
Duke of Anjou lay, to convey to him the defiance of the 
Englishman. Meantime, however, Edward began rather to 
repent the unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the 
ambassadors back again. Perhaps, after all, he had been a 
little too hasty, and had gone a little too far ; so he called 
together the chief of his barons, and opened his mind to 
them. '• He did not wish," he said, " the envoys to bear 
his cartel to the King of France." In the opinion of the 
straightforward practitioners whom he consulted, the means 
of prevention were easy : what more practicable and natural 
than to send out a handful of men-at-arms — catch the knight 
and the lawyer, and then and there cut their throats ? But 
Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter ; and pos- 
sibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and a dilemma 
always do — ^" I have it" — he gave some private instructions 



112 GLAEET AND OLIVES. 

to Sir "William le Moine, the High Steward of Agenois, 
who immediately set forth at the head of a plump of spears. 
Meantime, the envoys were quietly jogging along, when, 
what was their horror and surprise at being suddenly 
pounced upon by the Lord Steward, and arrested, upon the 
charge of having stolen a horse from their last baiting 
place. It was in vain that the unfortunate pair offered to 
bring any evidence of the falsity of the charge ; Sir Wil- 
liam had as many witnesses as he commanded men-at-arms, 
and the victims were hurried to the castle of Agen, and left 
to their own reflections in the securest of its dungeons. 
When they got out again, or whether they ever got out at 
all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us ; but surely 
the story shows the Black Prince in a new and not exactly 
favourable light. We would hardly have expected to find 
the " Lion whelp of England" stooping to trump up a false 
accusation against innocent men, in order to shuffle out of 
the consequences of his own brag. 

I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen 
to Pau : cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy 
conveyances. The pace at which they crawl puts it out of 
the question that they should ever see a snail which they 
did not meet ; while the terribly long stages to which the 
horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral 
discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jan- 
gled on to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those 
towns which you wonder has been built where it chances to 
lie, rather than any where else ; and boasting a grand old 
Grothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kind- 
est manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian porti- 
co, supported on fat, dropsical pillars. The question was 
now, how to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed 
every day, but was nearly always full ; I might have to 



GBOSS-GOVNTRY TRAVELLING IN FRANCE. 113 

wait a week for a place. A vnititrier^ however, was to start 
in the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down 
at Tarbes, whence locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a 
late supper : and so with this worthy I struck a bargain. 
He showed me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start 
at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but 
no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a 
carrier's shed, with an army of roulage carts drawn up be- 
fore it. I kicked my heels there in vain, for not a bit could 
I see of voiture or voitiirier. Seven struck — half-past 
seven — the north-wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain 
began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like 
Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that 
voiturier. As it was, the wind got colder and colder ; the 
streets became deserted, and the rain and sleet lashed the 
rough pavement with a loud, shrieking rattle, when a wilder 
gust than common came thundering up the narrow street. 
At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for 
warmth, into a vast, broad-eaved auberge^ the house of call, 
I supposed, for the carriers ; and entering the great shadowy 
kitchen, almost as big and massive looking a room as an old 
baronial hall, a voice I knew — the voice of the rascally voi- 
turier himself — struck my ear, exclaiming with the most 
warm-hearted affability, " Entrez^ mon&ieur ; entrez. We 
were waiting for you." 

Waiting for me ! Surrounded by a group of men in 
blouses, and two or three fat women, v/ho were to be my 
fellow-passengers, there was the villain, discussing a capital 
dinner — the bare-armed wenches of the place rushing be- 
tween the vast fire-place and the table, with no end of the 
savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole 
party in the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The 
cool impertinence of the greeting, however, tickled me amaz- 



114 CLARET AND OLIVES, 

ingly, and room being immediately made, I was entreated 
to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it would be a 
good many hours before I had another chance. This looked 
ominous ; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely 
browned stews, was so appetising, that I fear I committed 
the enormity of making a very tolerable second dinner • 
and so about half-past eight we at last got under weigh. 

But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. 
There was some cock-and-bull story of that having been 
damaged ; and we were squeezed — six of us, including the 
fat ladies — into a dreadful scjuare box, with our twelve legs 
jammed together like the sticks of a faggot, in the centre. 
Oh, the woes of that dreary night! — the gruntings and the 
groanings of the fat ladies — the squabbles about " making 
legs," and, notwithstanding our crowded condition-, the in- 
tensity of the pinching cold — one window was broken, 
another wouldn't pull up, and the whole vehicle was full of 
cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased to a 
hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that 
you could hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch 
of his voice to the poor jades, who drearily dragged us 
through the mire. After an hour or two's riding, the water 
began to trickle in on aU sides. The fat ladies said they 
could not possibly survive the night ; and a poor thin slip of 
a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the 
most vehement " merci-bien merci ^" I ever heard in my 
life. About one in the morning, we pulled up at a lone 
public-house, in the kitchen of which the passengers refresh- 
ed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their great sur^ 
prise with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. 
But the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of 
toddy. The rest of the night wore slowly and wretchedly 
on. I believe we had the same horses all the way. Day 



GB OSS- GO UNTR Y TRA VELLINQ- IN FRANGE. \ \ 5 

was grey around us when we heard the voices of the market 
people flocking into Tarbes ; and looking forth, after a short, 
nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champagne 
country, as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. 
And this was the boasted South of France, and the date 
was the twentieth of October ! 




CHAPTER VIT. 

PAU THE ENGLISH IN PAU ENGLISH AND RUSSIANS THE YIEW OF THE 

PYRENEES THE CASTLE THE STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE HIS BIRTH 

A VISION OF HIS LIFE ROCHELLE ST. BARTHOLEMEW IVBT ^HENRI AND 

SULLY HENRI AND GABRIELLE HENRI AND HENBJETTE d'eNTRAGUES 

RAVAILLAO. 

EXCEPTING-, perhaps, tlie famous city of Boulogne- 
sur-Mer, Pau is the most Anglicised town in France. 
There are a good many of our countrymen congregated 
under the old steeples of Tours, which every British man 
should love, were it only for Quentin Durward ; but they do 
not leaven the mass ; while in Pau, particularly during the 
winter time, the main street and the Place Royale look, so 
far as the passengers go, like slices cut out from Wey- 
mouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an instant the 
insular cut of the groups, who go laughing and talking the 
familiar vernacular along the rough ^;ai;^. There is a tall, 
muscular hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt collar, and 
a lady on each arm — fresh-looking damsels, with flounces, 
which smack unmistakeably of England. It is a young 
gentleman with his sisters. Next come a couple of wonder- 
fully well-shavedj well buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay 
English officers, talking " by Jove, sir," of " Wilkins of 
ours ;" and '' by Greorge, sir," of what the " old Duke had 
said to Galpins of the 9th, at the United Service." An old 
fat half-pay officer is always a major. I do not know how 



E UBLES AND G UINEAS. 1 1 7 

it happens, but so it is ; and when you meet them settled 
abroad, ten to one they have been dragged there by their 
wives and daughters. 

" By Jove, sir !" said one of these veterans to me at Pau 
—he was very confidential over a glass of brandy and water 
at the cafe on the Place — " By Jove, sir, for myself, I'd 
never like to go further from Pall Mall than just down 
Whitehall, to set my watch by the Horse Guards' clock ; 
but the women, you know, sir, have a confounded hankering 
for these confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what 
is an old fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir ?" 

" The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as usual, 
very much together, and try to live in the most English 
fashion they may ; ask each other mutually to cut mutton ; 
display joints instead oi plats ^ and import their own sherry; 
pass half their time studying Galignani^ and reading to 
each other long epistles of news and chat fro 1 England — 
the majors, and other old boys, clustering t. gether like 
corks in a tub of water ; the young people get ing up all 
manner of merry pic-nics and dances, and any bt ly who at 
all wishes to be in the set, going decorously to the weekly 
English service. 

" Tenez^'' said a Pau shopkeeper to me ; " your country- 
men enjoy here all the luxuries of England. They have even 
an episcopal chapel and a pack of fox-hounds." 

Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends upon 
its English residents, who are generally well-to-do people, 
spending their money freely. Shortly before my visit, 
however, a Russian prince, who had established himself in 
a neighbouring chateau, had quite thrown the English repu- 
tation for wealth into the shade. His equipages, his par- 
ties, the countess's diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur 
of the English all put together ; and the way in which he 



113 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

spent money enraptured tlie good folks of tlie old capi- 
tal of Bearne. The Russians, indeed, wherever they go on 
the continent, deprive us of our pre&tige as the richest peo- 
ple in the world — an achievement for which they deserve 
the thanks of all Englishmen with heads longer than their 
purses. 

" Ah^ monsieur /" I was once told, " la pluiede guine^s^ 
dest honne ; Qnais le pluie de roubles^ dest une averse — un 
deluge /" 

Gaston Phoebus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard 
of a fellow, but he showed his taste in pitching upon a site 
for the castle of Pau. He reared its towers on the edge of 
a rocky hill. Far beneath sparkle the waters of the Gave — 
appearing and disappearing in the broken country — a tum- 
bling maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling cop- 
pice, corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens — verily a land flow- 
ing with mi K and honey. Further on, sluggish round-back- 
ed hills he ,ve up their green masses, clustered all over with 
box-wood and then come — cutting with many a pointed 
peak anr Jagged sierra — the bright blue sky — the glorious 
screen of the Pyrenees. From the end of the Place, which 
runs to the ridge of the bank on which stands the town, you 
may gaze at it for hours — the hills towering in peak and 
pinnacle, sharp, ridgy, saw-like — either deeply, beautifully 
blue, or clad in one unvarying garb of white ; and beyond 
that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even still 
finer, as you are more elevated ; and the sheer sink of the 
wall and rock below you, makes, as it were, a vast gulf, 
across which the mind leaps, even over the green stumbling 
landscape of the foreground to the blue or white peaks be- 
yond. 

But the feature — the characteristic — the essence — the 
very soul of Pau — is neither the fair landscape, nor the 



THE ^^GOOD Kim- HENRI QUATRE. ug 

rushing Gave, nor the steadfast Pyrenees. It is the memory 
of the good King Henri Quatre, which envelopes castle and 
town— which makes haunted holy stones of these grim grey 
towers— ^hich gives all its renown and glory to the little 
capital of Bearne. Look up at the " Good King" in his 
bronze effigy in the Place. These features are more famil- 
iar to you than those of any foreign potentate. You know 
them of old— you know them by heart— a goodly, honest, 
well-favoured, burly face— a face with mind and matter in 
It— a face not of an abstract transcendental hero, but em- 
phatically of a Man. Passion and impulse are there, as in 
the jaw of Henry YIII. ; energy and strong thought, as in 
the brow of Cromwell ; a calm, and courtly, and meditative 
smile over all, as in the face of Charles I. The stubbly 
beard grizzling round the firm and close-set lips, and worn 
by the helmet, speaks the soldier— the conqueror of Ivry ; 
the high, broad forehead and the quick eye tell of the states- 
man—he who proclaimed the edict of Nantes ; the frank, 
gallant, and blithesome expression of the whole face— what 
does it tell of— of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity and 
debonnair courage won La Heine Margot from the intrigues 
of Catherine ; whose impulsive heart and fiery passions cast 
him at the feet of Gabrielle d'Estrees ; and whose weakness 
—manly while unmanly— made him for a time the slave of 
Henriette d'Entragues. There is an encyclopaedia of mean- 
ing in the face, and even in the figure, of Henri. He had 
a grand mind, with turbulent passions ; he was deeply wise, 
yet frantically reckless ; he had many faults, but few vices.' 
If he gave up a religion for a throne ; but he never claimed 
to be a martyr or a saint. Indeed, he was the last man in 
the world deliberately to run his head against a wall. He 
thought that he could do more for the Huguenots by turn- 
ing Catholic and King, than by remaining Protestant and 



120 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

Pretender ; and he did it. Yet for all — for the men of 
Rome and the men of Geneva — he had a broad, genial, 
hearty sympathy. Were they not all French ? — all the chil- 
dren of a king of France % Henri had not one, morsel of 
bigotry in his soul : his mind was too clear, and his heart 
too big. And yet, with the pithiest sagacity — ^with the 
sternest will — with the most exalted powers of calm com- 
prehension — and the most honest wish to make his good peo- 
ple happy — he could be recklessly vehement — Quixotically 
generous — he could fling himself over to his passions — do 
foolish things, rash things — insult the kingdom for which 
he laboured, and which he loved — and thunder out his 
wrath at the grey head of the venerable counsellor who 
stood by him in field and hall, and whose practical wisdom 
it was which trimmed and shaped Henri's grand visions of 
majestic politics and astounding plans for national combi- 
nations. In the face, then, and in the figure of the Good 
King, you can trace, I think, some such mixture of quali- 
ties. Neither are beau ideals. You are not looking at an 
angel or an Apollo — but a bold, passionate, burly, good- 
humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in muscle, with 
plenty of human flesh and its frailties, yet with plenty of 
mind to shine through, and elevate them all. 

Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to Louis 
Philippe, it has been rescued from the rats and the owls, 
and refitted as exactly as possible in its ancient style. 
Mounting the grand staircase, we see everywhere around, 
on walls and vaulted ceiling, the gilt cyphers, " H. M." — 
not, however, meaning Henri and Margot, but the grand- 
father of the King of France — the stern, old Henri D'Al- 
bret. King of Navarre, and Margaret his wife — La Margue- 
rite cles Marguerites^ the Pearl of Pearls. Pass through a 
series of noble state-apartments, vaulted, oak-pannelled, with 



THE BIRTH OF HENRI. 121 

rich wooden carved work adorning cornice and ceiling, and 
we stand in the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne 
D'Albret's bed, a huge structure, massive and carven, and 
with ponderous silken curtains, still stands as it did at the 
birth of the king. And what a strange coming into the 
world that was. The Princess of Navarre had travelled a 
few days previously nearly across France, that the hoped- 
for son and heir might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her 
father, was waiting and praying in mortal anxiety for the 
event. " My daughter," said the patriarch, " in the hour of 
your trial you must neither cry nor moan, but sing a song 
in the dear Bearnais tongue ; and so shall the child be 
welcomed to the world with music, and neither weep nor 
make wry faces." The princess promised this, and she kept 
her word ; so that the first mortal sound which struck Henri 
Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting an old 
pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne. 

" Thanks be to God ! — a man-child hath come into the 
world, and cried not," said the old man. He took the infant 
in his arms, and, after the ancient fashion of the land, rubbed 
its lips with a clove of garlic, and poured into its mouth, 
from a golden cup, a few drops of Jurancon wine, And so 
was born Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow 
of these tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom a vis- 
ion of the grandly eventful life which followed. An army 
is drawn up near Rochelle, and a lady leads a child between 
the lines. Coligni and the Conde head the group of gene- 
rals who, bonnet in hand, surround the lady and the child ; 
and then Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's 
voice, dedicates the little Henri to the Protestant cause in 
France ; and with loud acclamations is the gift received, 
and the leader accepted by the stern Huguenot array. — 
The next picture. An antique room in the Louvre. The 
6 ' 



122 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

bell of St. Germain I'Auxerrois is pealing a loud alarm ; 
arquebus shots ring through the streets, and cries and clamour 
of distress come maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly 
resolute, stands Henri, beside a young man richly, but neg- 
ligently, dressed, who, after speaking wildly and passionately 
to him, snatches up an arquebus — stands for a moment as 
though about to level it at his unshrinking companion, and 
then exclaiming like a maniac, " Tlfaiit queje iue quelq'un^^ 
flings open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and Charles 
IX. on the night of the St. Bartholemew. — Another vision. 
A battle-field : Henri surrounded by his eager troops — the 
famous white plume of Ivry rising above his helmet : 

"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, 

Por never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray ; 

Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war, 

And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre." 

Solemn organ music floating through cathedral aisles must 
introduce the next scene. The child who was dedicated to 
the cause of Protestantism kneels before a mitred priest. 
" Who are you?" is the question put. "I am the king." 
" And what is your request ?" " To be admitted into the 
pale of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church." Again 
a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny, Duke de 
Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations, and despatches, 
to elevate and make prosperous the great kingdom of France. 
" I would," said the king, " that every subject of mine might 
have a fat fowl in his pot every Sunday." — Take another : a 
gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of courtiers sur- 
round a plain ferryman, who, in answer, to the laughing 
questions of the monarch, whom the boatman does not know, 
admits that " the king is a good sort of fellow enough, but 
that he has a jade of a mistress, who is continually wanting 



THE DEATH OF HENRI QdATBE. 123 

fine gowns and trumpery trinkets, which the people have to 
pay for ; — not, indeed, that it would signify so much if she 

were but constant to her lover ; but they did say that ." 

Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, ex- 
claims : " Sire, that fellow must be hanged forthwith !" 
" Sire !" — the boatman gazes in astonishment on his ques- 
tioner. " Tut, tut," is the reply ; " the poor fellow shall no 
longer pay corvee or gabelle^ and so will he sing for the rest 
of his days, Vive Henri — Vive Graberielle !" — Another 
scene , in the library and working room of the great king, 
and his great minister. The monarch shows a paper signed 
with his name to his counsellor. It is a promise of marriage 
to Henriette d'Entragues. Sully looks for a moment at his 
master, then tears up the instrument, and flings the frag- 
ments on the earth. " Are you mad, duke ?" shouts Henri. 
" If I am," was the reply, " I should not be the only mad- 
man in France." The king takes his hand, and does him 
justice. — -Yet one last closing sketch. In a huge gilded 
coach in the midst of a group of splendidly dressed courtiers, 
sits the king. There is an obstruction in the street. The 
cortege stops ; the lackeys leave it to clear the way ; when 
a moody-browed fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all 
on end, bounds into the carriage — a poniard gleaming above 
his head — and in a moment the Good King, stabbed with 
three mortal wounds, has gone home to his fathers. All is 
over : Henri Quatre is historical ! 



CHAPTEE YIII. 

THE VAL d'oSSAU THE VIN DE JTJRANCON THE OLD BEARNE COSTUME 

THE DEVIL AND THE BASQUE LANGUAGE ^PYRENEAN SCENERY ^THE WOLF 

THE BEAR A PYRENEAN AUBERGE THE FOUNTAIN OF LARUNS, AND 

THE EVENING SONG. 

THE valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied 
of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up 
behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty miles into the 
mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both forming cut de 
sacs for all, save active pedestrians and bold muleteers, the 
bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in 
one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was medi- 
tating as to my best course for seeing some of the moun- 
tain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of the bridge be- 
neath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming waters of 
the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a lit- 
tle man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long 
mouth, continually on the grin, dressed in a species of 
imitation of English sporting costume — in an old cut-away 
coat, and what is properly called a bird's-eye choker — 
the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off by 
sabots — addressed me, half in French, half in what is call- 
ed English : — Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere 
else in the hills ? The diligences had stopped running for 
the season ; but what of that ? he had plenty of horses and 



I 

THE JUBANGON VINEYABDS. 125 

vehicles : lie would mount me for the fox-hounds, if I wish- 
ed. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by, 
IvTessieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate 
thing for me to have fallen in with him. The upshot of 
a long conversation was, that he engaged to drive me up 
the glen with his own worshipful hands, business being slack 
at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he 
might touching the country, the people, their customs, and 
all about them. The little man was delighted with this 
last stipulation, and observed it so faithfully, that for the 
next two days his tongue never lay ; and as he was a merry, 
sensible little fellow enough, and thoroughly good-natured, 
I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off we went, 
then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a 
raw-boned white horse," who, however, went through his 
work like a Trojan. My driver's name was E. Martin ; and 
the first thing he did was to pull up at the first public- 
house outside of Pau. 

" Look up there !" he said, pointing to a high-wooded 
ridge to the right ; " there are the Jurancon vineyards — 
the best in the Pyrenees ; and here we shall have a coup- 
d'etrier of genuine old Jurancon wine." 

Eemembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no 
objection. The wine, which is white, tastes a good deal 
iike a rough chablis^ and is very deceptive, and very heady : 
I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to use it but 
gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was 
there, and the new soldiers were going rolling about the 
streets — some of them madly drunk, from the effects of 
this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly tasting wine. Our road 
lay along the Gave — a flashing, sparkling mountain-stream, 
running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood, and 
small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cot- 



126 GL ABET AND OLIVES. 

tages and clusters of huts, half -hidden amid the vines, 
which are trailed in screens and tunnels from stake to stake, 
and tree to tree ; and, on each side of the way, hedges of 
box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets, which would de- 
light the heart of an English gardener — gave note of one of 
the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The 
soil and the climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, 
in more northern mountain regions, would he occupied by 
furze and heather, is hereabouts taken up by perfect thick- 
ets and jungles of thriving box-wood ; while the laurel and 
rhododendron grew in bushy luxuriance. Charming, how- 
ever, as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first 
aspect of the cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricket- 
ty, and unwholesome hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a 
mountain country, go almost invariably together. In Ger- 
man Switzerland, the cottages are miserable ; and every 
body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf- 
built bothy. So of the Pyrenean cottages ; many of them 
—mere hovels of wood and clay, so rickety-looking, that 
one wonders that the first squall from the hills does not 
carry them bodily away — are composed of one large, ir- 
regular room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky 
beams stretching across beneath the thatch. Two or three 
beds are made up in the darkest corners ; festoons of 
Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are suspended 
from the rafters ; and opposite the huge open fire-place is 
generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the 
apartment — a lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with 
the crockery of the household. In a very great proportion 
of cases, the windows of these dwellings are utterly unglaz- 
ed ; and when the rough, unpainted outside shutters are 
closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people, how- 
ever, seem better fed and better clothed than the G-erman 



THE BEBNAIS PEASANTS, 127 

Switzers. In tlie vicinity of Pau, the women wear the 
Ibi^ghtest silk handkerchiefs on their heads, are perfectly 
dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons, and cut their 
petticoats of good, fleecy, homespun stuff, so short as to 
display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted 
stockings. The men, except that they wear a blue bonnet 
—flat, like that called Tam O'Shanter in Scotland— are 
decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is as you leave 
behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the 
ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has 
its distinguishing peculiarities of costume ; but cross its 
boundary to the eastward, and you relapse at once into the 
ordinary peasant habiliments of France— clumsy, home- 
cut coats only being occasionally substituted for the 

blouse. 

The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque ; 
and as we made our way up into the hills, we soon began 
to see specimens : and hardly one of these but was borne 
by a fine-looking, well-devoloped man, or a black-eyed and 
stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are indeed 
remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent 
privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real 
French blood in their veins ; indeed, I believe the stock to 
be Spanish, just as the beauties of Aries, out of all sight 
the finest women in France, are in their origin partly 
Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are' as 
swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of 
motion, owing it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals 
— the habit of carrying -water-vases on their heads. Their 
faces are in general clearly and classically cut — the nose 
thin and aquiline — the eye magnificently black, lustrous, and 
slightly almoned-shaped — another eastern characteristic. 
The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours 



128 GLAEET AND OLIVES. 

thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn 
over a red vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with 
rough embroidery, and fastening by small belts across the 
bosom. On the head, a sort of capote or hood of dark 
cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and petticoat, is 
arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is 
to be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the 
crown of the head, forming a protection also from the heat 
of the sun. In cold and rainy days, it is allowed to fall 
down ovel" the shoulders, mingling with the folds of the 
drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly 
shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the 
sabot, into which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of 
the men is of a correspondingly quaint character. On their 
heads they invariably wear the flat, brown bonnet, called the 
herret^ and from beneath it the hair flows in long, straight 
locks, soft and silky, and floating over their shoulders. A 
round jacket, something like that worn by the women, knee- 
breeches of blue velvet — upon high days and holida^^s — and, 
like the rest of the costume, of course homespun woollen 
upon ordinary occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or 
hood, is worn only in rough weather. In the glens more to 
the westward, low sandals of untanned leather are frequently 
used, the sole of the foot only being protected. Sandals 
have certain classic associations connected with them, and 
look very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfort- 
able in reality. I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in 
this species of chaussure through the wet streets of Pau 
amid a storm of snow and rain, and a spectacle full of more 
intensely rheumatic associations could nowhere be wit- 
nessed. 

As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the face- 
tious M. Martin had a joke to crack with every man, woman, 



TEE DEVIL LEARNING BASQUE. 129 

and child we encountered ; and the black eyes lighted up 
famously, and the classic faces grinned in high delight, at 
the witticisms. 

" I suppose your are speaking Bearne ? " I said. 
" The fine old language of the hills, sir. French !— no 
more to he compared with it than skimmed milk with 
clotted cream." 

" And you speak Spanish, too ? " 

" Well, if a gentleman contrahanda, who takes walks 
over the hills in the long dark nights, with a string of 
mules before him, wished to do a small stroke of business 
with me, I dare say we could manage to understand each 
other." And, therewith, M. Martin winked. first with one 
eye, and then with the other. 

" And Basque," said I, '' you speak that also ? " 

M. Martin recoiled : " No man who ever did live, or 

will live, could learn a word of that infernal jargon, if he 

were not a born Basque. Learn Basque, indeed ! — Mon 

Dieu^ monsieur I Don't you know that the devil once tried, 

and was obliged to give it up for a bad job ? I don't know 

why he wanted to learn Basque, unless it were to talk to 

the fellows who went to him from that part of the country ; 

and he might have known that it was very little worth the 

hearing they could tell him. But, however, he spread his 

wings, and flew and flew till he alighted on the top of one 

of the Basque mountains, where he summoned all the best 

Basque scholars in the country, and there he was for seven 

years working away with a grammar in his hand, and saying 

his lessons like a good little boy. But 'twas all no use ; he 

never could keep a page in his head. So one fine morning 

he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick to the 

masters with the other, and flew off— only able to say ^ yes' 

6* 



130 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

and ' no ' in Basque, and that with such a bad pronuncia- 
tion that the Basques couldn't understand him." 

This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion of 
the valley in which we enter really into the Pyrenean hills. 
Up to this point we have been traversing a gloriously wood- 
ed, and beautifully broken, country. Bidges of forests, 
vineyard slopes, patches of bright-green meadow land, steep, 
tumbling hills, wreathed with the thickest box-wood, have 
been rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each with 
its foaming torrent and woodland vista opening up, have 
been passed in close succession. Scores of villages, ricketty 
and poverty-struck, even in this land of fertility, have been 
traversed, until, gaining the height of a ridge which seems 
to block the way, we saw before us what appears to be 
another valley of a totally different character — stern, soli- 
tary, wild — a broad, flat space, lying between the hills, 
yellow with maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and 
on either side the mountain-slopes — no mere hills this time, 
but vast and stately Alps, heaving up into the regions of 
the mist, rising in long, uniform slopes, stretching away and 
away, and up and up — the vast sweeps green with a richness 
of herbage unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with 
ancient mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet ; 
here and there a gully or wide ravine breaking the Titanic 
embankment ; silver threads of waterfalls appearing and 
disappearing in the black jaws ; and over the topmost clefts, 
glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which these stretching 
braes lead upwards. The mist lies in long, thin wreaths 
upon the bosom of the hills immediately around you, and 
you see their bluff summits now rising above it, and then 
gradually disappearing in the rising vapour. The general 
atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps, and 
you imagine a peak a long day's march from you within an 



THE WOLVES OF THE PYRENEES. 131 

easy climb ; cottages, and even hamlets, appear perched at 
most impracticable heights ; and every now and then, a 
white gash in the far-up hill-side announces a marble-quarry, 
and you see dark dots of carts toiling up to it by winding 
ways. These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre 
pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes scattered, 
sometimes growing thickly — for all the world like the wire- 
jags set round the barrel of a musical snuff-box. The lateral 
valleys are, however, frequently masses of forest, and it is 
high up in these little frequented passes, that Bruin, who 
still haunts the Pyrenees, most often makes his appearance. 
'' But he is going," said M. Martin — " going with the 
wild cats and the wolves. The Pyrenees are degenerating, 
monsieur ; you never hear of a man being hugged to death 
now. Poor Bruin ! For, after all, monsieur, he is a gentle- 
manly beast ; he never kills the sheep wantonly. He always 
chooses the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it. 
But the wolf — sacr^ nom die diable ! — the wolf — a coquin 
— a brigand — a Basque tonnere — he will slaughter a flock 
in a night. Mon Dieu ! he laps blood till he gets drunk 
on it. A voleur a mauvais sujet — a cochon — a dam beast !" 
" Bat do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?" 
" Sacr^ ! Monsieur ; tenez. There was Jacques Blitz 
— an honest man, a farmer in the hills ; he came down to 
Pau, when the snow was deep, and the winter hard. I saw 
him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon he started to go home 
again. It looked threatening, and people advised him to 
stay ; but no ; and o.ff he went. Monsieur, that night in 
his cottage they heard, hour by hour, the howling of the 
wolves, and often went out, but could see nothing. Poor 
Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all off in 
search ; and sure enough they found a skeleton, clean picked, 
and the bones all shining in the snow. Only, monsieur, the 



132 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

feet were still whole in tlie sabots : the wolves had gnawed 
the wood, but could not break it. ' Take off the sabots !' 
screamed the wife. And they did so : and she gave a shud- 
dering gasp, and said, ' They are Jacques' feet !' and tumbled 
down into the snow. Sacre peste^ the cannibals ! Curse 
the wolves — here's to their extirpation !" 

And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of Juran 
con we had laid in at the last stage. He went on to tell 
me that sometimes a particular wolf is known to haunt a dis- 
trict, perhaps for years, before he gets his quietus ; most 
probably a grey-haired, wily veteran, perfectly up to all the 
devices of the hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. 
Bears flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well 
known, as to be honoured with regular names, by which they 
are spoken of in the country. One old bear, of great size, 
and of the species in questioil, had taken up his head-quarters 
upon a range of hills forming the side of a ravine opening 
up from the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique — 
probably after his fellow Bruin, who long went by the same 
appellation in the Jardin des Plantes, and was known by it 
to every Parisian. The Pyrenean Dominique was a wily 
monster, who had long baffled all the address of his numer- 
ous pursuers ; and as his depredations were ordinarily con- 
fined to the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and 
as he never actually committed murder, he long escaped the 
institution of a regular battue — the ordinary ending of a 
bear or wolf who manages to make himself particularly con- 
spicuous. At length the people of the district got absolutely 
proud of Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's 
fine tale, he was " the pride and the pest of the parish," and 
might have been so yet, were it not that on one unlucky day 
he was casually espied by the garde forestiere. This is a 
functionary whose duty it is to patrol the hills, taking note 



TEE SEEPEEBDS OF TEE PYRENEES. 133 

that the sheep are confined to their proper bounds on the 
pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on a ledge 
of rock, when, looking over it, whom should he see but the 
famous Dominique sunning himself upon the bank below. 
The garde had a gun, and it was not in the heart of man to 
resist the temptation. He fired, Dominique got up on his 
hind legs, roaring grimly, when the contents of the second 
barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however, was 
the garde's opinion of the prowess of his victim, that he kept 
loading and firing long after poor Dominique had quitted 
this mortal scene. The carcase was too heavy to be moved 
by a single man, but next day it was carried to the nearest 
village by a funeral party of peasants, not exactly certain 
as to whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the catas- 
trophe. 

As we were now well on in October, and as the weather 
had greatly broken up, much of the pleasure of my Pyre- 
nean rambles being indeed marred by lowering skies and 
frequent and heavy rains — which were snow upon the hills 
— the flocks were fast descending from the upland pastures 
to their winter quarters in the valley and the plain. Every 
couple of miles or so, in our upward route, we encountered 
a flock of small, long-eared, long and soft-woolled sheep, 
either trotting along the road or resting and grazing in the 
adjacent fields. The shepherds stalked along at the head 
of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue- 
like in the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, 
wearing the Ossau costume, but one and all enveloped in a 
long, whitish cloak, with a peaked hood, flowing to the earth, 
which gave them a ghastly, winding-sheet sort of appear- 
ance. When a passing shower came rattling down upon the 
wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields, en- 
veloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless 



134 CLAEET AND OLIVES. 

robes, looked like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among 
the mountains. Each man carried, slung round him, a 
little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a handful of which is 
used to entice within reach any sheep which he wishes to 
get hold of. One and all, like their brethren of the Landes, 
they were busy at the manufacture of worsted stockings, 
and kept slowly stalking through the meadows where their 
flocks pastured, with the lounging gait of men thoroughly 
broken in to a solitary, monotonous routine of sluggish life. 
Many of these shepherds were accompanied by their chil- 
dren — the boys dressed in exact miniature imitation of their 
fathers. Indeed, the prevalence of this style of juvenile 
costume in the Pyrenees makes the boys and girls look ex- 
actly like odd, quaint little men and women. The shep- 
herds are assisted by a breed of noble dogs, one or two of 
which I saw. They are not, however, generally taken down 
to the low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious 
in the half-savage state in which it is of importance to keep 
them, in respect to their avocations amid the bears and 
wolves. Among themselves, I was told that they fought 
desperately, occasionally even killing each other. The dogs 
I saw were magnificent looking fellows, of great size and 
power, their chests of vast breadth and depth, and their 
■ limbs perfect lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to be 
of a breed which might have been originated by a judicious 
crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands, St. Bernard mastiffs, 
and thorough old English bull-dogs ; and I could easily be- 
lieve that one wrench from their enormous square jaws is 
perfecty sufiicient to crash through the neck vertebraB of the 
largest wolf. 

As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes grew steeper 
and higher, and more barren and rugged ; the precipices 
became more fearful ; the mountain gorges more black and 



AN AUBERGE IN THE PYRENEES. 135 

deep; and at length we appeared to be entering the deep 
pit of an amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of 
stormy and precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies 
the little mountain-town of Laruns; the steep slope of the 
heathy hill rising on one side of the single street from the 
very backs of the houses. M. Martin, on the Irish princi- 
ple of reserving the trot for the avenue, whipped up the 
good old grey, and we rattled at a canter through the mi- 
riest street I ever traversed, driving throngs of lean long- 
legged pigs right and left, and dispersing groups of cloaked 
lounging men, with military shakos, and sabres— in whose 
uniform, inded, I recognised that of my old friends, the 
Douamers of Boulogne and Calais; for true we were ap- 
preaching, not indeed an ocean, but a mountain frontier, and 
Spanish ground was not so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff 
from Cape Grrinez. 

We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty marble 
fountain, and at the door of a particularly modest-looking 
auberge. As I was getting out, M. Martin stopped me: 
Wait," he said, " and we will drive into the house— don't 
you see how big the door is ?" As he spoke, it opened upon 
Its portals. The old grey needed no invitation, and in a 
moment we found ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half 
coach-hoTise, half stable. Two or three loaded carts were 
lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the gloomiest cor- 
ners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed as they 
were rubbed down, or received their provender. 

" But where is the inn ?" 

" The inn ! up-stairs, of course." 

And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase, or, rather 
a railed ladder, down which came tripping a couple of bloom- 
ing girls to carry up-stairs our small amount of luggage 
Following their invitation, I soon found myself in a vast 



136 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

parlour and kitchen and all — a great shadowy room, with a 
baronial-looking fireplace, and a couple of old women sit- 
ting in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace and 
the kitchen department of the room were in the shadow at 
the back. Nearer the row of lozenge-pane windows, rose a 
dais — with a long dining-table set out — and smaller tables 
were scattered around. Above your head were mighty 
rafters, capitally garnished with bacon and hung-meat of 
various kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains 
and valleys beneath your feet ; but, notwithstanding this 
evidence of rickettyness, every thing appeared of massive 
strength, and the warmth of the place, and the savour of 
the cuisine — for a French kitchen is always in a chronic 
state of cookery — made the room at once comfortable and 
appetising — ten times better than the dreary salle of a bar- 
rack-like hotel. 

In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, 
joined me. rubbing his hands. " This was the place to 
stop at," he said. " No use of going further. The moun- 
tains beyond were just like the mountains here ; but the 
people here were far more unsophisticated than the people 
beyond. They haven't learned to cheat here, yet," he 
whispered. " And, besides, you see a good Pyrenian 
auberge, and at the Wells you would only see a bad French 
hotel, which, I dare say, would be no novelty ; while, as for 
price — pooh ! you will get a capital dinner here for what 
they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there." 

And so it proved. Pending the preparation of this 
dinner, however, I strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily- 
poor place, with the single recommendation of being built 
of stone, which can be had all round for the carrying. The 
arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable is 
universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables 



OMENS AND SUPERSTITIONS IN THE PYRENEES. 137 

also serve for pig-stjes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and 
as cleaning-day is made to come round as seldom as possi- 
ble, it may be imagined that the town of Laruns is a highly 
scented one. Through some of the streets, brooks of 
sparkling waters flow, working the hammers of feeble full- 
ing mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to 
dry from window to window, and roof to roof, and beneath 
them congregate groups of old distaff-plying women, loung- 
ing duaniers, and no end of geese standing half asleep on one 
foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven afield, or 
driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears 
the way in a moment. 

The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anti- 
cipations. Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the 
genuine mountain-stream breed — the skin gaily speckled, 
and the flesh a deep red, were followed by a roasted jigot 
of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be flavoured which 

has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills the 

whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up 
by the neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, 
and laughed, and was kept in one perpetual blush by M, 
Martin all through dinner-time. 

At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken. 
" There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin. 
" You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. 
" Any child knows that to break a plate is good luck : it is 
to smash a dish which brings bad luck." 

" They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said 
my companion. " If a hare cross the path, it is a bad 
omen ; and if a cow kick over the milking-pail, it is a bad 
omen. And they are always fancying themselves be- 
witched " 

" No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne ; " so long 



138 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

as we keep a sprig of vervene over tlie fire, we know very 
well that there's not a sorciere in all the Pyrenees can harm 
us." 

I thought of the old couplet — 

"Sprigs of vervain, and of dill, 
Which, hinder witches of their will." 

As the evening closed, the little Place became quite 
thronged with girls, come to wash their pails and draw 
water from the fountain. Each damsel came statelily along, 
bearing a huge bucket, made of alternate horizontal stripes 
of brass and tin, upon her head, and polished like a mirror. 
A half-hour, or so, of gossipping ensued, frequently broken 
by a pleasant chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure 
voices of the whole assembly. The effect, when they first 
broke into a low, wailing song, echoing amongst the high 
houses and the hill behind, was quite electrifying. Then 
they set to work, scrubbing their pails as if they had been 
the utensils of a model dairy, and at length marched away, 
each with the heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon 
her head — and with a carriage so steady and gracefully un- 
swerving that, to look at the pails, you would suppose them 
borne in a boat, rather than carried by a person walking. 

At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed, with as 
crisp, and white, and fresh linen as man could wish for, I 
was long kept awake by the vocal performances of a party 
of shepherds, who had just arrived from the hills, and who 
paraded the Place singing in chorus, long after the cracked 
bell in the little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths 
of these people have capital voices. Their lungs and throats 
are well-developed, by holding communication from hill to 
hill ; and they jodle or jerk the voice from octave to oc- 
tave, just as they do in the Alps. This said jodling ap- 



THE SONGS OF THE PYRENEES. I39 

pears, indeed, to be a natural accomplisliment in many 
mountain countries. The songs of the shepherds at Laruns 
had jodling chorusses, but the airs were almost all plaintive 
minors, with long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to 
the pitch of the key-note, and only extending to about a 
third above or below it. The music was always performed 
in unison, the words sometimes French, and sometimes 
Bearnais. The single phrase in the former language, which 
I could distinguish, and which formed the burden of one of 
the ditties, was, " Ma chere onaitressey This " chere 
maitresse^^ song, indeed, appeared the favourite. Over 
and over again was it sung, and there was a wild, melan- 
choly beauty which grew more and more upon you, as the 
mellow cadence died away again and again in the long 
drawn out notes of " Ma chere mait7'esse." 



CHAPTER IX. 

RAINY WEATHER IN THE PYRENEES — ^EAUX CHAUDES OUT OF 8EAS0N, AND IN THE 
RAIN — ^PLUCKING THE INDIAN CORN AT THE AUBERGE AT LARUNS ^THE LE- 
GEND OF THE "WEHR-WOLF, AND THE BARON WHO WAS CHANGED INTO A 
BEAR. 

I WAKENED next morning to a mournful reveille — the 
pattering of the rain ; and, looking out, found the Place 
one puddle of melting sleet. The fog lay heavy and low 
upon the hills, and the sky was as dismal as a London firma- 
ment in the dreariest day of November. Still, M. Martin 
was sanguine that it would clear up after breakfast. Such 
weather was absurd — nonsensical ; he presumed it was in- 
tended for a joke ; but if so, the joke was a bad one. How- 
ever, it must be fine speedily — that was a settled point — 
that he insisted on. Breakfast came and went, however, 
and the rain was steady. 

" Monsieur/' said Jeanne, " has lost the season of the 
Pyrenees." 

" Is there not the summer of St. John to come yet ?" 
demanded Martin. 

" Yes ; but it will rain at least a week before then." 

What was one to do? There clearly was no speedy 
chance of the clouds relenting ; and what was sleet with us, 
was dry snow further up the pass. The Peak du Midi, with 
visions of which I had been flattering myself, was as inac- 



WET WEATHER IN THE PYRENEES.' 141 

cessible as Chimbarozo, Spain, of which I had hoped to 
catch at least a Pisgah peep — for I did want to see at least 
a barber and a priest — was equally out of the question. 
During the morning a string of mules had returned to La- 
, runs, with the news that the road was blocked up ; and tru- 
ly I found that, had it not been so, my first step towards 
going to Spain must needs have been in the direction of Ba- 
yonne, to have my passports vis^d — those dreary passports, 
which hang like clogs to a traveller's feet. And so then passed 
the dull morning tide away, everybody sulky and savage. 
Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up stairs, and sat 
in groups smoking over the fire ; the two old women 
scolded ; Jeanne grew quite snappish ; and M. Martin ran 
out every moment to look at the weather, and came back to 
repeat that it was no lighter yet, but that it soon must clear 
up, positively. At length my companion and I determined 
upon a sally, at all events — a bold push. Let the weather 
do what it pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never 
mind the weather. So old grey was harnessed in the stable ; 
we blockaded ourselves with wraps, and started bravely 
forth, a forlorn hope against the elements. We took the 
way to Eaux Chaudes ; and the further we went, the hea- 
vier fell the rain — cats and dogs became a mild expression 
for the deluge. The mist got lower and lower ; the sleet 
got colder and colder ; old grey snorted and steamed ; we 
gathered ourselves up under the multitudinous wrappers; the 
rain was oozing through them — it was trickling down our 
necks — suddenly making itself felt in small rills in unex- 
pected and aggravating places, which made sitting unpleas- 
ant — collecting in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervad- 
ing with one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body 
and soul. The whole of creation seemed resolved into a 
chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had passed into what would 



142 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

be called in a pantomime " the Rainy Realms, or the Dreary 
Domains of Desolation ;" and what comfort was it — soaked, 
sodden, shivering, teeth chattering — to hear Martin pro- 
claim, about once in five minutes, that the weather would 
clear up at the next turn of the road ? The dreary day re- 
mains, cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my memory 
ever since. I believe I saw the etablissment of Eaux 
Chaudes ; at least, there were big drenched houses, with 
shutters up, like dead-lights, and closed doors, and mud 
around them, like water round the ark. They looked like 
dismal county hospitals, with all the patients dead except 
the madmen, who might be enjoying the weather and the 
situation ; or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and 
the turnkeys starved at the cell doors for lack of fees. I 
remember hearing a doleful voice, like that of Priam's cur- 
tain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't get out of the vehi- 
cle ; but to move was hideous discomfort, bringing new wet 
surfaces into contact with the skin ; so I croaked out, " No, 
no ; back — back to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, 
all in a steam, splashed round through the mud ; and back we 
went as we had come — ^rain, rain, rain, pitiless, hopeless rain — 
the fog hanging like a grey winding-sheet above us — the 
zenith like a pall above that, leaden and drear, as on a Boo- 
thia Felix Christmas Day. 

There was nothing for it but the fireside. The very 
douaniers had abandoned the street — the pigs had retreated 
— the donkeys brayed at intervals from their ground-floor 
parlours ; and only the mimic geese sat on one leg, croak- 
ing to be rained on, and the marble fountain, so pretty yes- 
ter-evening in a gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing 
" coals to Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it 
made me sad to contemplate. Dinner was ordered as soon 
as it could be got ready ; we felt it was the last resource. 



STILL WJST WEATHER. I43 

I fortunately had a change of clothes. Martin had not ; 
hut he retired for a while, and reappeared in a homespun 
coat and trowsers, six inches too long foT him, which he was 
fain to hold up, to the enormous triumph and delight 
of Jeanne. At length, then, that neat-handed Phillis an- 
nounced dinner. 

" Stay a moment," exclaimed Martin ; " I am' just going 
t) see whether it is likely to clear up." 

Out he went into the mud, and returned with the an- 
nouncement that it would be summer weather in five 
minutes ; he knew by some particular movement of the mist. 
But poor Martin's weather predictions had ceased to com- 
mand any credit; and the peasants around the fire shrugged 
their shoulders and laughed. The dinner passed off like a 
funeral feast. I looked upon the Place — still a puddle, 
and every moment getting deeper. No song — no jodling 
choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns ! 

Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and looking at 
the fire, I saw a huge cauldron put on, and presently the 
steam of soup began to steal into the room. Martin and 
Jeanne were holding confidential intercourse, which ended 
in my squire's coming to me, and announcing that there was 
to be held a grand ^peluche of the Indian corn, and that the 
soup was to form the supper of the work-people. Presently, 
sure enough, a vast pile of maize in the husk was brought 
up, and heaped upon the floor ; and as the dusk gathered, 
massive iron candlesticks, with tapers which were rather 
rushlights than otherwise, were set in due order around the 
grain. Then, in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the 
neighbours poured in — men, women, and children — and 
vast was the clatter of tongues in Bernais, as they squatted 
themselves down on stools and on the floor, and began to 
strip off the husks of the yellow heads of corn, flinging the 



144 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

peeled grain into coarse baskets set for the purpose. The 
old people deposited themselves on settles in the vast 
chimney-nook : and amongst them there was led to a seat a 
tall blind man, with grizzly grey hair, and a mild smiling 
face. 

" Ask that man to tell you a story about any of the old 
castles or towns hereabouts," whispered Martin; "he knows 
them all — all the traditions, and legends, and superstitions 
of Bearne." 

This counsel was good. So, as soon as the whole room- 
ful were at work — stripping and peeling — and moistening 
their labours by draughts of the valley vine — I proceeded 
to be introduced to the patriarch ; but, ere I had made my 
way to him : 

" Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking mat- 
ron ; " you know you always give us one of your tales to 
ease our work, and so now start off, and here is the wine- 
flask to wet your lips." 

All this, and the story which followed, was spoken in 
Bernais, so that to M. Martin I am indebted for the out- 
lines of the tale, which I treat as I did that of the Baron of 
the Chateau de Chatel-morant : — 

" Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the knight she 
addressed — holding in her hand the hand of their daughter 
Adele, a girl of six or seven years of age — "where do you 
hunt to-day ?" 

" Marry," replied her husband, " in the domains of the 
Dame of Clargues. There are more bears there than any- 
where in the country." 

" But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves her 
bears, and would not that they should be hurt ; and besides, 
she is a sorceress, and can turn men into animals, if she 



A PYBENEAN LEGEND. I45 

will. Oh, she practises cunning magic ; and she is also a 
wehr-wolf ; and once, when Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf 
with an arblast bolt, and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame 
of Clargues appeared with her right arm in bandages, and 
Leopold of Tarbes died within the year." 

But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said the 
Dame of Clargues was no more a witch than her neigh- 
bours ; and, poising his hunting-spear, away he rode with all 
his train — the horses caracolling, and the great wolf and bear- 
hounds, leaping and barking before them. They passed the 
castle of the Dame of Clargues, and plunged into the 
forests, where the wolves lay — the prickers beating the 
bushes, and the knights and gentlemen ready, if any game 
rushed out, to start in pursuit with their long, light spears. 
For more than half the day they hunted, but had no suc- 
cess ; when at last a huge wolf leaped out of a thicket, and 
passed under the very feet of the horses, which reared and 
plunged, and the riders, darting their spears in the confusion, 
only wounded each other and their beasts, while three or four 
of the best dogs were trampled on, and the wolf made off at a 
long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had never lost 
sight of her, and now followed close upon her haunches, stand- 
ing up in his stirrups, and couching his lance. Never ran wolf 
so hard and well, and had not Sir Roger's horse been a 
Spanish barb, he had been left far behind. As it was, he 
had not a single companion ; when, coming close over the 
flying beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The spear 
glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the same 
moment the barb swerved in her stride, and suddenly stop- 
ping, fell a trembling, and laid her ears back, while Sir 
Roger descried a lady close by, her robes rustling among 
the forest-herbs. Instantly, he leaped off his horse, and 
adyanced to meet i^nd protect the stranger from the wolf ; 



146 GLAEET AND OLIVES. 

"but the wolf was gone, and, instead, lie saw the Dame of 
Clargues with a wound in her left temple, from which the 
blood was still flowing. 

" Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast seen me a 
wolf — be thou a bear!" And even as she spoke, the 
knight disappeared, and a huge brown bear stood before 
her. 

"And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy kindred 
in the forest-beasts — ^only hearken ; thou shalt kill him who 
killest thee, and killing him thou shalt end thine own line, 
and thy blood shall be no more upon the earth." 

When the chase came up, they found the Spanish barb 
all trembling, and the knight's spear upon the ground ; but 
Sir Roger was never after seen. So years went by, and the 
little girl, who had beheld her father go forth to hunt in 
the Dame of Clargues' domain, grew up, and being very 
fair, was wooed and wedded by a knight of Foix, who was 
called Sir Peter of Bearne. They had been married some 
months, and there was already a prospect of an heir, when 
Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and his wife accom- 
panied him to the castle-gate, even as her mother had con- 
voyed her father when he went on his last hunting party to 
the woods of the Dame of Clargues. 

" Sir Peter," said the lady, " hast thou heard of a great 
bear in the forest, which, when he is hunted, the hunters 
hear a doleful voice, saying, ' Hurt me not, for I never did 
thee any harm ?' " 

" Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to have that 
bear to keep company with his ass," said the knight, gaily, 
and away he rode. He had hunted with good success most 
of the day, and had killed both boars and wolves, when he 
descried, couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear, with 
hair of a grizz!y grey— rf or he seeined very old, but his eyes 



A PYBENEAN LUG END. I47 

slione bright, and there was something in his presence which 
cowed the dogs, for, instead of haying, they crouched and 
whined ; and even the knights and squires held off, and 
looked dubiously at the beast, and called to Sir Peter to be 
cautious, for never had such a monstrous bear been seen in 
the Pyrenees ; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud. 
" My lord, my lord — draw back, for that is the bear which, 
when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 
' Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm !' " 

Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing his 
sword of good Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast. The 
dogs then took courage, and flew at him ; but the four 
fiercest of the pack he killed with as many blows of his paws, 
and the rest again stood aloof; so that Sir Peter of Bearne 
was left face to face with the great beast, and the fight was 
long and uncertain ; but at last the knight prevailed, and 
the bear gave up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed in, 
and made a litter, and with songs and acclamations carried 
the dead bear to the castle, the knight, still faint from the 
combat, following. They found the Lady Adele at the 
castle-gate ; but as soon as she saw the bear, she gave a la- 
mentable scream, and said, '■ Oh ! what see I V and fainted. 
When she was recovered, she passed off her fainting fit upon 
terror at the sight of such a monster ; but still, she de- 
manded that it should be buried, and not, as was the cus- 
tom, cut up, and parts eaten, " Holy Mary," said the 
knight, " you could not be more tender of the bear if he 
were your father," Upon which, Adele grew very pale ; 
but, nevertheless, she had her will, and the beast was 
buried. 

That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in his 
sleep, and, catching up arms which hung near him, began to 
fight about the room, as he had fought with the bear. His 



148 CLAEET AND 0LIVE8. 

lady was terrified, and the varlets and esquires came run- 
ning in, and found liim with the sweat pouring down his 
face, and fighting violently — hut they could not see with 
what. None could approach him, he was so savage, and he 
fought till dawn, and returned, quite over-wearied, to his 
bed. Next morning he knew nothing of it ; but the next 
night he rose again ; and the next, and the next — and fought 
as "before. Then they took away his weapons, but he ranged 
the castle through, till he found them, and then fought 
more furiously than ever, till, at length, he was accustomed 
to fall on his knees with weakness and fatigue. Before a 
month had passed, you would not have known Sir Peter ; 
he seemed twenty years older ; he could hardly drag one 
foot after the other ; and he fell melancholy and pined — 
for at last he knew that the curse of the bear was upon him, 
and that he was not long for this world. Many then ad- 
vised to send for the Dame of Clargues, who was still alive, 
but old, and who was more skilful in such matters than any 
priest or exorcist on this side of Paris ; and at last she was 
sent for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead was still 
to be seen ; her grey hair did not cover it. 

" Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, " did you ever 
see your father ?" 

" Yes, truly ; the very day he went forth a-hunting and 
never returned, I saw him, and I yet can fancy the face 
before me." 

" Thou wilt see it to-night." 

" Then my forebodings — that strange feeling — was true. 
Oh ! my father — my husband." 

Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter de 
Bearne rose again to renew his nightly combat. He stag- 
gered and groaned, and his strength was spent, and those 
who stood round sang hymns and prayed aloud. At length 



A PYRENEAN LEGEND. 149 

the kniglit slirieked out with a fearful voice — the first time 
he had spoken in all his dreary sleep-fighting — •' Beast, thou 
hast conquered !" and fell back upon the floor, his limbs 
twisting like the limbs of a man who is being strangled ; 
and Adele screamed aloud. 

" Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of Clargues 
to the lady — passing at the same time her hand over the 
lady's eyes. 

'• G-od !" cried Adele — " my father kills my husband ;" 
and she fell upon the floor, and she and the unborn babe 
died together, and Sir Peter de Bearne was likewise lifted 
lifeless from the spot. 



CHAPTER X. 

TARBES BAGNERRE DE BIGORRE PIGEON-CATCHING FRENCH COMMIS VOYA- 

GEURS THE KING OF THE PYRENEAN DOGS THE LEGEND OF ORTHON, 

WHO HAUNTED THE BARON OF COBASSE. 

THE next day by noon — still raining — I was at Pan ; and 
having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for Bag- 
nerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of Pypenean 
locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient 
English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old 
County of Bigorre, which was given up to England as por- 
tion of the ransom of King John of France ; and here to 
Tarbes came, with a gallant trail, the Black Prince, to visit 
the Count of Argmanac — the celebrated Gaston Phoebus, 
Count of Foix — leaving his strong castle of Orthon, to be 
present at the solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now 
consists of the scores of small cross-country diligences, which 
start in every direction from it as a common centre. The 
main feature of the town is a huge square, nine-tenths of 
the houses being glaring whitewashed hotels, with message- 
ries on the ground-floors. Diligences by the score lie scat- 
tered around ; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old 
horses who draw them go stalking solemnly across the 
square beneath the stunted lime-trees. There is an adult 
population of conductors, with silver ear-rings, and their 
hands in their pockets, always lounging about ; and a ju- 



THE SOLITARY BIG HOTEL. 151 

V€nile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, 
and take your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place — • 
excepting, perhaps, Aries — for getting your boots blacked, 
I ever visited. If you were a centipede, and had fifty pairs 
of Wellingtons, they would all be shining like mirrors in a 
trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless, in- 
deed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, 
and keep continuall}^ paying each other. Bagnerre is about 
sixteen miles distant ; and a mountain of a diligence, not so 
much laden with luggage as freighted with a cargo, con- 
veyed me there in not much under four hours ; and I re- 
paired — it was dusk, and, of course, raining — to the Hotel 
de France — one of the huge caravansaries common at water- 
ing-places. A buxom lass opened the wicket in the Porte 
Coehere. 

" I can have a room V 

" Oh, plenty !" 

And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great 
hotel rose on two sides, and a small co^ys de logis on the 
two others. 

" Wait," said the girl, " until I get the key." 

And off she tripped. The key !• Was the house shut 
up 1 Even so. I was to have a place as big as a hospital 
to myself. The door opened ; all was darkness and a fusty 
smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight. Our 
footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a for- 
eign edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the " Moat- 
ed.Grange." I was ushered into a really splendid suite of 
rooms — of a decidedly grander nature than I ever occupied 
before, or ever occupied since. 

" The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Mon- 
sieur may choose whatever room he pleases ; and the table- 
cVlibte bell rings at six." 



152 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

This, at all events, v/as reassuring. Then my conduc- 
tress retreated ; the doors banged behind her, and I felt 
like a man shut up in St. Peter's. The silence in the house 
was dreadful. I was fool enough to go and listen at the 
door : dead, solemn silence — a vault could not be stiller. I 
would have given something handsome for a cat, or even a 
mouse ; a parrot would have been invaluable — it would 
have shouted and screamed. But no ; the hush of the place 
was like the Egyptian darkness — it was a thick silence, which 
could be felt. At length the taUe-d'hote bell rang. The 
salle a manger was in the building across the yard. Thither 
I repaired, and found a room, or rather a long corridor, big 
enough to dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, 
with a miraculously long table, tapering away into the dis- 
tance. Upon a few square feet of this table was a patch of 
white cloth ; and upon the patch of cloth one plate, one 
knife and fork, and one glass. This was the table-cVliote^ 
and, like Handel, " I was de kombany." 

Next day the weather was no better ; but I was despe- 
rate, and sallied out in utter defiance of the rain ; but such 
a dreary little city as Bagnerre, in that wintry day, was 
never witnessed. I never was at Heme Bay in November, 
nor have I ever passed a Christmas at Margate ; but Bag- 
nerre gave me a lively notion of the probable delights of 
the dead season at either of these favourite watering-places. 
The town seemed defunct, and lying there passively to be 
rained on. Half the houses are lodging-places and hotels ; 
and they were all shut up — ponderous green outside shut- 
ters dotting the dirty white of the walls. Hardly a soul 
was stirring ; but ducks quacked manfully in tlie kennels, 
and two or three wretched donkeys — dreary relics of the 
season — stood with their heads together under the lime-trees 
in the Place. I retreated into a cafe. K there were nobody 



A DEIJABY DAY. 153 

in France but the last man, you would find him in a cafe. 
making his own coifee, and playing billiards with himself. 
Here the room was tolerably crowded ; and I got into con- 
verg^ation with a group of townspeople round the white Fay- 
ence stove. I abused the weather — never had seen such 
weather — might live a century in England, and not have 
such a dreary spell of rain — and so forth. The anxiety of 
the good people to defend the reputation of their climate 
was excessive. They were positively frightened at the pros- 
pect of a word being breathed in England against the skies 
of the Pyrenees in general, and those of Bagnerre in par- 
ticular. The oldest inhabitant was appealed to, as never 
having remembered such weather at Bagnerre. As for the 
summer, it had been more than heavenly. All the springs 
were delightful ; the autumns were invariably charming ; 
and the winters, if possible, the best of the four. The pre- 
sent rain was extraordinary — exceptional — a sort of phe- 
nomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads. One of 
these worthies, understanding that however strong my ob- 
jections were to fog and drizzle, I was not by any means 
afraid of being melted, recommended me to make my way 
to the Palombiere, and see them catch wild pigeons, after a 
fashion only practised there and at one other place in the 
Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of a three- 
mile pull up-hill, I made my way through the narrow 
suburban streets, and across the foaming Adour, here a glo- 
rious mountain-stream, but already made useful to turn nu- 
merous flour-mills, and to drive the saws and knives by 
which the beautiful marble of the Pyrenees is cut and pol- 
ished. Hereabouts, in the straggling suburbs, the whole 
female and juvenile population were clustered, just within 
the shelter of the open doors, knitting those woollen jackets, 
scarfs, and so forth, which are so much in vogue amongst 



154 CLARET AND LIVES. 

the visitors in the season. There was one graceful .group 
of pretty girls, the eldest not more than four year of age. 
pursuing the work in a shed open to the street, seated round 
a loom, at which a good-natured-looking fellow was ope- 
rating. 

" That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl next me ; 
"how much will they give you for making it?" 

The weaver paused in his work at this question. " Tell 
the gentleman, my dear, how much Messieurs So-and-so give 
for knitting that scarf" 

" Two liards," said the little girl. 

Two liards, or half a solitary sous ! This was worse than 
the shirt-makers at home. 

" It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. " She is a 
child ; but the best hands can't make more than big sons 
where they once made francs ; but all the trades of the poor 
are going to the devil. I don't think there will be any poor 
left in twenty years — they will be all starved before then." 

This led to a long talk with my new friend, who was a 
poor, mild, meek sort of man — a thinker, after his fashion, 
totally uninstructed — he could neither read nor write — and 
a curious specimen of the odd twists which unregulated and 
unintelligent ponderings sometimes give a man's mind. His 
grand notion seemed to be, that whatever might be the iso- 
lated crimes and horrors now and then committed upon the 
earth, the most terrible and malignant species of perverted 
human ingenuity was— the employment of running streams 
to work looms. 

" "Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked. "Did 
the power that formed the Adour intend its streams to be 
made use of to deprive an honest man of his daily bread ? 
He would uncommonly like to find the orator who whould 
make that clear to his mind. It was terrible to see how 



THE V/E AVERS OF THE PYRENEES. 155 

men perverted the gifts of Nature ! How could I, or any 
one else, prove to him that the water beside us was intended 
to take the place of men's arms and fingers, and to be used, 
as if it were vital blood, to manufacture the garments of 
those who lived upon its banks ?" 

I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally 
be put to analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses ; 
and I instanced the flour and maize mill, which was working 
merrily within a score of paces of us. For a moment, but 
for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered. Then 
recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I 
meant to say that the process of grinding corn was like the 
process of weaving cloth? It was curious to observe the 
confusion in the man's mind between analogy and resem- 
blance. As I could not but admit that the two operations 
were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified 
opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the 
immediate subject of conversation. I was not a native of 
this part of France ? Not a native of France at all ? Then 
I came from some place far away ? Perhaps from across 
the sea ? From England ! Ah ! well, indeed, there was 

an English lady married, about five miles off— Madame . 

Of course I knew her ? No ? Well, that was odd. He 
would have thought that, coining from the same place, I 
ought to know her. However — were there many hand-loom 
weavers like himself in England ? No, very few indeed. 
What ! did they weave by water power there, too ? were the 
folks as bad as some of the people in his country ? I ex- 
plained that, not being so much favoured in the way of 
water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam. 

The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning 
proof of human malignity. It was more horrible even than 
the water-atrocities of the Pyrenees. 



156 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

" Steam !" — lie repeated the word a dozen times over, 
shaking his head mournfully at each iteration, — " Steam ! 
Ah, well, what is this poor imhappy world coming to ?" 

Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling 
backwards and forwards through the web, he added heartily ; 
'■ After all, their moving iron and wood will never make the 
good, substantial, well-wearing cloth woven by honest, in- 
dustrious flesh and blood." 

Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political 
economy in such a case 1 I left the good man busily pur- 
suing his avocation, and lamenting over the perversity of 
making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water. 

Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a 
muddy torrent, I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink 
of sunshine. Then the wind began to blow, and vast roll- 
ing masses of mist to move before it. From a high ridge, 
with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away 
beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, 
Bagnerre ♦appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the 
trees, and the whole town lying as it were at the bottom of 
a bowl. It must be fearfully hot in summer, when the sun 
shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the high hills 
about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind 
was rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right 
over the Pyrenees. Attaining a still greater height, the 
scene was very grand. On one side was a confused sea of 
mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated masses of 
wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the north- 
ern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the 
mist, to re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get 
a glimpse of a long vista of valley, which next minute would 
be a mass of grey nonentity. The mist-wreaths rose and 
rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would be 



PiaEON-GATCHING ON THE PYRENEES. 157 

enveloped as in a dense white smoke ; then the fog-bank 
v/ould flee away, ascending the broad breast of the hill be- 
fore me, and wrapping trees, and rocks, and pastures in its 
shroud. All this time the wind blew a gale, and roared 
among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun looked out, 
and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog, 
with some partial patch of landscape ; and, altogether, the 
effect, the constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly 
landscape appearing and disappearing, the glimpses occasion- 
ally vouchsafed of the distant plain of Gascony, sometimes 
dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes golden 
bright in a partial blaze of sunshine, — all this was very strik- 
ing and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere, 
situated upon the ridge of the hill — which cost a good hour 
and a half's climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, 
and on the northern side rise two or three very high, mast- 
like trees of liberty, notched so as to allow a boy as supple 
and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the top, and en- 
sconce himself in a sort of cage, like the " crow's nest" which 
whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found 
the fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree ; they 
said the wind was too high for the pigeons to be abroad ; 
but for a couple of francs they offered to make believe that 
a flock was coming, and show me the process of catching. 
The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up the 
bending pole, into the crow's nest — a feat which I have a 
great notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy 
would have shirked, considering that there were neither foot- 
ropes nor man-ropes to hold on by. Then, on certain cords 
being pulled.^ a whole screen of net rose from tree to tree, so 
that all passage through the row was blocked. 

" Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, '• the birds at this 
season come flying from the north to go to Spain, and they 



158 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

keep near tlie tops of the hills. "Well, suppose a flock 
coming now ; they see the trees, and will fly over them — 
if it wasn't for the pigeonier^ 

" The pigeonier I what is that ?" 

" We're going to show you." And he shouted to the 
boy in the crow's nest, " Now Jacques !" 

Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like a pos- 
sessed person — waving his arms, and at length launching 
into the air a missile which made an odd series of eccentric 
flights, like a bird in a fit. 

" That is the pigeonier," said the fowler ; " it breaks the 
flight of the birds, and they swoop down and dash between 
the trees — so." 

He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately the wall 
of nets, which was balanced with great stones, fell in a mass 
to the ground. 

" Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that the birds 
are struggling and fluttering in the meshes." 

At Bagnerre there is a marble work — that of M. Ge- 
ruset — which I recommend every body to visit, not to see 
marble cut, although that is interesting, but to pay their 
respects to, I believe, the grandest dog in all the world — 
a giant even among the canine giants of the Pyrenees. I 
have seen many a calf smaller than that magnificent fel- 
low, who, as you enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, 
like a king from his throne, and, walking up to you with a 
solemn magnificence of step which is perfect, will Wag his 
huge tail, and lead you — you cannot misunderstand the in- 
vitation — to the counting-house door. For vastness of brow 
and jaw — enormous breadth and depth of chest, and girth 
of limb, I never saw this creature equalled. The biggest 
St. Bernard I ever came across was almost a puppy to him. 
A tall man may lay his hand on the dog's back without the 



UmiRAY AND COMMIS VOYAGEURS. ^ 159 

least degree of stoop ; and the animal could not certainly 
stand erect under an ordinary table. 

"I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed me the 
works, " you have had many oiFers for that dog ?" 

" My employer," he replied, " has refused one hundred 
pounds for him. But, even if we wished, we could not dis- 
pose of him : he is fond of the place and the people here ; 
so that, though we might sell him, he wouldn't go with his 
new master ; and I would like to see any four men in Bag- 
nerre try to force him." 

That evening I fortunately did not include the whole 
company at the table-dliote. There was a young gentleman 
very much jewelled, and an elderly lady also very strongly 
got up in the way of brooches and bracelets, to whom the 
young gentleman was paying very assiduous but very forced 
attention. The lady was sulky, and sent i^lat after jy/a^ 
untasted away ; and when her companion, as I thought, 
whispered a remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style ; 
at which he bit his lip, turned all manner of colours, and 
then got moodily silent. I suspected that the young gen- 
tleman had married the old lady for her money, and was 
leading just as comfortable a life as he deserved. But, be- 
sides them, we had a couple of the gentlemen who are to be 
more or less found in every hotel in France — commis voya- 
ge.urs^ or commercial travellers. By the way, the aristo- 
cratic Murray lays his hand, or rather his " Hand-book," 
heavily about the ears of these gentlemen — castigating them 
a good deal in the Croker style, and with more ferocity than 
justice : " A more selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal 
set, does not exist;" "English gentlemen will take good 
care to keep at a distance from them," and " English ladies 
-will be cautious of presenting themselves at a French tahle- 
dliote. except" in certain cases specified. Now, I agree 



160 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

with Mr. Murray that commercial travellers, French and 
English, are not distinguished by much polish of manner, 
or elegance of address ; on the contrary, the style of their 
proceedings at table is frequently slovenly and coarse, and 
their talk is almost invariably " shop." In a word, they are 
not educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come to 
such expressions as " selfish, brutal, and depraved," I think 
most English travellers in France will agree with me, that 
the aristocratic hand-book maker is going more than a little 
too far. I have met scores of clever and intelligent coni- 
tnis voyageurs — hundreds of affable, good-humoured ones — 
thousands of decent, inoffensive ones. In coinpany with a 
lady, I have dined at every species of table-d'hdte^ in every 
species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, 
and the Bay of Biscay to the Alps, and I cannot call to 
mind one instance of rudeness, or voluntary want of civility, 
from one end of our journey to the other ; while scores and 
scores of instances of attention and kindness — more parti- 
cularly when it was ascertained that my companion was in 
weak health — come thronging on me. I know that the 
French commis voyageitr looks after his own interest at 
table pretty sharply, and also that he is quite deficient in 
all the elegant little courtesies of society ; but to say that 
he is brutal or depraved^ because he is not a petit maltre 
and an elegant^ is neither true nor courteous. If there be 
any set of Frenchmen to whose conduct at tahle-cVhotes 
strong expressions may be fairly applied, it is French offi- 
cers, who, sprung from a rank often inferior to that of the 
bagman, and, with all the coarseness of the barracks cling- 
ing to them, frequently cluster together in groups of half-a- 
dozen — scramble for all that is good upon the table — eat 
with their caps on, which the commis voyageur only does 
in winter, when the bare and empty halle is miserably cold 



\ 

TEE EASTERN PYRENEES. 161 

— and in general behave with a coarse rudeness, and a tu- 
multuous vulgarity, which I never saw private soldiers 
guilty of. either here or in France. 

fBut I must hurry my Pyrennean sketches to an end. 
The true South — I mean the Mediterranean washed pro- 
vinces — still lie before me ; and I must perforce leap al- 
most at a bound over a long and interesting journey 
through the little-known towns of the Eastern Pyrenees — 
quiet, sluggish, tumble-down places, as St. Gaudens, St. 
Girons, and St. Foix, possessed neither of pump-rooms, 
nor warm-springs, bi*fe.,«£egetating on lazily and dreamily 
in their glorious climate — for, after all, it does sometimes 
stop raining, and that for a few blazing months at a time, 
too. I would like to sketch St. Gaudens, with its broad- 
caved, booth-like shops, and the snug town-hall, with pic- 
tures of old prefects and wigged fermiers generaux into 
which they introduced me, and where they set all their mu- 
nicipal documents before me, when I applied for some infor- 
mation as to the landholding of the district. I would like 
to sketch at length a curious, walled village on the head 
waters of the Garonne — a dead-and-gone sort of place, of 
which I asked an old man the name. " A poor place, sir," 
he said ; '' a poor place. Not worth your while looking at. 
All poor people here, sir — poor people; not worth your 
while speaking to. And the name — oh, a poor name, sir, 
not worth your while knowing ; but, if you insist — why, 
then, it's Valentine." I would like to sketch the merry 
population in the hills round that dead-and-gone village — 
half farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth peasants, 
in Yorkshire — a jolly set — all sporting men, too, who give 
up their looms, and go into the woods after bears as boldly 
as Sir Peter de Bearne. And I would like, too, to try to 
bring before my reader's eye the viney valley of the Ariege, 



162 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

and the deep ravines tlirough which the stream goes foam- 
ing, spanned by narrow bridges, each with a tower in the 
centre, where the warder kept his guard, and opened and 
shut the huge, iron-bound doors, and dropped and raised 
the portcullis at pleasure. And these old feudal memorials 
bring me to the castles and ruined towers so thickly peo- 
pling the land where lived the bands of adventurers, as 
Froissart calls them, by whom the fat citizens of the towns 
were wont to be ^'- guerroyes et harries^^ and most of which 
have still their legends of desperate sieges, and, too often, 
of foul murders done within their dreary walls. Pass, as I 
perforce must, however, and gain Provence — there is yet 
one legendary tale I cannot help telling. It is one of the 
best things in Froissart, and a little twisting would give it 
a famous. satiric significance against a class of bores of our 
own day and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle- 
not far from Tarbes, and was told to Froissart by a squire, 
" in a corner of the chapel of Orthez," during the visit paid 
by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix — who, I am 
sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly exalted 
by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble 
chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; 
whereas, in fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, 
possessed of neither faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon 
of Chimay sometimes descended into the lowest depths of 
penny-a-lining, and " coloured " the cases just as a bribed 
police reporter does when a " respectable " gentleman gets 
into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dun- 
geon ; and the bold Froissart has actually the coolness to 
assert that the death of the heir took place, inasmuch as 
his father, in a rage, because he would not eat the dainties 
placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist, hold- 
ing therein a knife with which he had been picking his 



TllJi: LEGEND OF OBTHON. 163 

nails, but the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only 
protruded a " groat's breadth " from his fingers, — the re- 
sult being that the steel unfortunately happened to cut a 
vein in young Gaston's throat. The simple truth of the 
matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's being a 
favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was 
separated — that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife 
might be avenged by her brother, the King of Navarre — 
and that he determined to starve the boy in a dungeon ; 
but the child not dying so soon as was expected, his father 
went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat. 

" To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, " the 
Count de Foix was perfect in body and mind, and no contem- 
porary prince could be compared to him for sense, honour, 
and liberality." 

" To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I 
reply, "you have written a charming and chivalrous chroni- 
cle; but you could take a bribe with any man of your time, 
and having done so, you could attempt to deceive posterity, 
and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as gallant 
a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild 
himself" 

However, there are black spots on the sun — to the legend 
which I promised. The Lord of Corasse — a castle by the 
way in which Henri Quatre passed some portion of his boy- 
ish days — the Lord of Corasse had a quarrel touching 
tithes with a neighbouring priest, who being unable to ob- 
tain his dues by ordinary legal or illegal remedies, sent a 
spirit to haunt the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded 
to perform his mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all 
night long, and breaking the crockery — so that very soon 
the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine without platters." 
At length, however, the Baron managed to come to speak- 



164 CLAEET AND OLIVES. 

ing terms with the demon, who was invisible, and found out 
that his name was Orthon, and that the priest had sent 
him. 

" But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord of 
Corasse, " this priest is a poor devil, and will never he able 
to pay you handsomely''. Throw him overboard at once, 
therefore, and come and take service with me." 

Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the devils, 
for he not only acceded to the proposition with astonishing 
readiness, but took such an affection to his new lord, that 
he could not be got out of his bed-room at night, to the sore 
discomfiture of the baroness, " who was so much frightened 
that the hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid 
herself under the bed-clothes," while the too familiar demon, 
never seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping his friend, 
the baron, chatting all night. But the charms of Orthon's 
conversation at length palled, particularly as they kept the 
baron night after night from his natural rest ; so he took 
to despatching the demon all over Europe, collecting infor- 
mation for him of all that was going on in the courts and 
councils of princes, and at the scene of war where there 
happened to be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast 
as a message by electric telegraph, the baron found him 
nearly as troublesome as ever. He was eternally coming in 
with intelligence, which he insisted upon telling, until the 
Lord of Corasse's head was fairly turned by the amount of 
news he was obliged to listen to. Never had there been so 
indefatigable an agent. He would have been invaluable to 
a newspaper — but he was boring the Lord of Corasse to 
death. 

A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The baron 
would groan, for he knew well who was the claimant for ad- 
mission. " Let me in. Let me in. I have news for thee 



tht: legend of obthok 



165 



from Hungary or England," as the case might be ; and the 
baron, groaning in soul and body, would get up and let the 
demon in ; while the latter would immediately commence 
his recitation : 

" Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's sake !" the 
victim would exclaim. 

" I will not let thee sleep until I have told thee the 
news," would be Orthon's reply, and he would go on with 
his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared him, 
and left the baron and the baroness to broken and unre- 
freshing slumbers. 

Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented 
to appear in a visible form to the baron ; that he took the 
shape of a lean sow, upon which the Lord of Corasse 
ordered the dogs to be let loose upon the animal, which 
straightway disappeared, and Orthon was never seen after. 
I suspect, however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this 
respect. He clearly did not see the fun of the story 
which is very capable of being resolved into an allegory — 
the fact being that the demon was some gentleman of the 
priest's acquaintance, with supernatural powers of boring 
whom he let loose upon the recalcitrant tithe-payer, until 
the arrears were at length paid up. The sow which disap- 
peared was clearly no other than a tithe-pig. 



CHAPTER XL 

LANGUEDOC THE "AUSTERE SOUTH " BEZIEES AND THE ALBIGEXSES THE 

FOUNTAIN OF THE GREVE AND PIERRE PAUL RIQUET ANTICIPATIONS OF 

THE MEDITERRANEAN THE MISTRAL THE OLIVE COUNTRY ABOUT BEZIERS 

THE PEASANTS OF THE SOUTH RURAL BILLIARD-PLAYING. 

GrAIN in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling 
on the great highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has 
taken me up at Carcassone, and will deposit me for the pre- 
sent at Beziers. We have entered in Languedoc, the most 
early civiKsed of the provinces which now make up France 
— the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature — 
the land whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater 
part of modern poetry — the land where the people first re- 
belled against the tyranny of Rome — the land of the Menes- 
trals and the Albigenses. People are apt to think of this 
favoured tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial paradise — 
one great glowing odorous garden — where, in the shade of 
the orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and beauty, 
crowned the heads of wandering Troubadours. The lite- 
rary and historic associations have not unnaturally operated 
upon our common notions of the country ; and for the 
" South of France," we are very apt to conjure up a brave, 
fictitious landscape. Yet this country is no Eden. It has 
been admirably described, in a single phrase, the " Austere 
South of France." It 25 austere — grim — sombre. It never 



THE " A USTEBE SO UTHP 1 57 

smiles ; it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness 
or ruralitj in it. It does not seem the country, but a vast 
yard — shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance 
from our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. 
A vast rolling wilderness of clodded earth, browned and 
baked by the sun ; here and there masses of red rock heav- 
ing themselves above the soil like protruding ribs of the 
earth, and a vast coating of drowthy dust, lying like snow ■ 
upon the ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like 
mountains — on all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded, 
looking as though frozen. On the slopes and in the plains, 
endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered with the uni- 
versal dust, and looking exactly like mop-sticks. Sprawl- 
ing and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles of 
burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected. 
The trees are olives and mulberries — the bushes vines. 

Grlance again across the country. It seems a solitude. 
Perhaps one or two distant figures, grey with dust, are la- 
bouring to break the clods with wooden hammers ; but that 
is all. No cottages — no farm-houses — no hedges — all one 
rolling sweep of iron-like, burnt-up, glaring land. In the 
distance, you may espy a village. It looks like a fortifica- 
tion — all blank, high stone walls, and no windows, but mere 
loopholes. A square church tower gloomily and heavily 
overtops the houses, or the dungeon of an ancient fortress 
rears its massive pile of mouldering stone. Where have 
you seen such a landscape before % Stern and forbidding, 
it has yet a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed 
trees — these formal square lines of huge edifices — these 
banks and braes, varying in hue from the grey* of the dust 
to the red of the rock — why, they are precisely the back- 
ground of the pictures of the renaissance painters of France 
and Italy. 



168 CLARET AND OLIVES, 

I was miserably disappointed witli the olive. It is one 
of the romantic trees, full of association. It is a biblical 
tree, and one of the most favoured of the old eastern em- 
blems. But what claim has it to beauty ? The trunk, a 
weazened, sapless-looking piece of timber, the branches 
spreading out from it like the top of a mushroom, and the 
colour, when you can see it for dust, a cold, sombre, grey- 
ish green. One olive is as like another as one mopstick is 
like another. The tree has no picturesqueness — no variety. 
It is not high enough to be grand, and not irregular enough 
to be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the 
elm, or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest 
and its poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great 
extent, of the mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect for 
the latter tree, because one of the Champions of Christen- 
dom — St. James of Spain, I think— delivered out of the 
trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess ; but the enforced 
lodgings of the captive form just as shabby and priggish- 
looking a tree as the olive. The general shape — that of a 
mop — is the same, and a mutual want of variety and pic- 
turesqueness, afSict, with the curse of hopeless ugliness, 
both silk and oil-trees. The fig, in another way, is just as 
bad. It is a sneaking tree, which appears as if it were 
growing on the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches 
— ^bending and twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking — 
put you som^ehow in mind of diseased limbs, which the 
quack doctors call " bad legs." In fact, it seems as if the 
climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc were utterly 
unfavourable to the production of forest scenery. One of 
our noble clumps of oak, beech, birch, and elm, at home, is 
worth, for splendid picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of 
greenery, every fig-tree which ever grew since fig-leaves 
were in vogue ; every olive which ever grew since the dove 



THE FOUNTAIN OF THE GEEVE, 169 

from the ark plucked off a branch ; and every mulberry 
which ever grew since St. James of Spain cut out the im- 
prisoned princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt 
gave our early bards many a poetic lesson ; but I can 
imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern when the North- 
ern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly Friar of 
Copmanhurst sort of stave about the " merry greenwood," 
and the joys of the " greenwood tree." 

As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting the 
dusty fields, the dusty olives, and the dusty vines, I pray 
the reader to glance to the right, towards the summit of a 
chain of jagged, naked hills. These go by the name of the 
Black Mountains, a good " Mysteries of Udolpho " sort of 
title ; and they form part of a range which separates the 
basin of the streams which descend to the north, and form 
the head waters of the Garonne, and those which descend 
to the south, and form the head waters of the Aude. Some- 
where about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in 
these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly dressed, 
attended by two labouring-looking men, who paid him great 
reverence. The little party toiled up and down in the 
hills, and frequently erected and gathered round magical- 
looking instruments. " Holy Mary !" said the peasants, 
" they are sorcerers, and they are come to bewitch us all !" 
For years and years did the richly dressed man and the 
two labourers haunt the Black Mountains, wandering un- 
easily up and down, climbing ridges, and plunging into 
valleys, always seeming to seek something which they could 
not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day, they 
came suddenly upon a young peasant, who was quenching 
his thirst at a fountain. 

The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the 
shepherd by his home-spun jacket. The boy thought he 



J 70 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

was going to be murdered, and screamed out ; but a Louis- 
d'or quieted bim in a moment. Tben tbe cavalier, trem- 
bling witli anxiety, exclaimed : " What fountain is tbis ?" 
" Tbe fountain of tbe Grreve," said tbe boy. 
" And it runs botb ways along tbe ridge of tbe bill ?" 
" Ay, any fool may see tbat balf of tbe water goes 
nortb, and balf goes soutb — any fool knows tbat." 
" And I only discovered it now. Thank God !" 
We shall see who tbe cavalier, tbe discoverer of tbe 
fountain of tbe Grevo, was, when we arrive at Beziers, 
Meantime tbe reader may be astonished tbat, after tbe cold 
frost and snow of tbe Pyrenees, a week or two later in tbe 
season brought me into a region of dry parched land, tbe 
sky blue and speckless from dawn to twilight — tbe sun 
glaringly hot, and tbe flying dust penetrating into tbe very 
pores of tbe skin. But we bave left tbe mist-gathering 
and rain-attracting mountains, and we have entered tbe 
" austere Soutb," where tbe sky far months and months is 
cloudless as in Arabia — where, at tbe season I traversed 
it, tbe sun being hot by day does not prevent the frost from 
being keen at night ; and where tbe mistral, or north wind, 
nips your skin as with knives ; while in every sheltered 
spot tbe noon-day beat bakes and scorches it. But such is 
Languedoc. 

As tbe evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning a 
bill before us, a clustered old city, with grand cathedral 
towers, and many minor church steeples, cutting the dark- 
ening air. Tbis is Beziers, where took place tbe crowning 
massaere of tbe Albigenses — tbe most learned, intellectual, 
and philosophic of the early revolters from tbe Cbureb of 
Borne, and whom it is a perfect mistake to consider in the 
light of mere peasant fanatics, like tbe Camisards or tbe 
Ya^udpis. In this ancient city, beneath the shadow of these 



THE BISHOP AND HIS FLOCK. 171 

dim towers, more thaiir twenty thousand men, women, and 
children, were slaughtered by the troops of orthodox France 
and Rome, led on and incited to the work by the Bishop of 
Beziers, one of the most black-souled bigots who ever de- 
formed God's earth. When the soldiers could hardly dis- 
tinguish in the darkness the heretics from the orthodox — 
although, indeed, they might have solved the problem by 
cutting down every intelligent man they saw — the loving 
pastor of souls roared out, " Cczdite omnes^ ccedite ; noverit 
enim Dominus qui sunt ejus /" It is to be fervently hoped, 
that, for the sake of the Bishop of Beziers, a certain other 
personage has long ago proved himself equally perspicuous 
and discriminating. 

We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just as the 
tabk-cfhote bell was ringing ; and I speedily found myself 
sitting down in a most gaily lighted soJon^ to a capital din- 
ner, in the midst of a merry company. For the last ten 
miles of the way, I had been amusing myself by catching 
glimpses of a distant lighthouse ; for I knew that it shone 
from the headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And 
the first glance at the Mediterranean was now my grand 
object of interest, as the first glance at the Pyrenees had 
been ; and as, I remember, long ago, the first glance of 
France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had each their turn. 
When, therefore, a dish of soles (stewed in oil, as the 
Jews cook them here — and the Jews are the only people 
in England who can cook soles,) was placed before me, I 
asked the waiter where the fish came from % 

" Mais, monsieur, where should they come from, but 
from the sea?" 

" You mean the Mediterranean ?" 

" Mais certainment, monsieur ; there is no sea but the 
Mediterranean sea." 



172 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

An observation which, coinciding with my own mental 
view for the moment, I quietly agreed in. 

In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue of a 
thoughtful and handsome man, dressed in the costume of 
the early period of Louis Quatorze, with flowing love-locks 
and peaked beard. His cloak has fallen unheeded from 
his shoulders, as he eagerly gazes on the ground — one hand 
holding a compass, the other a pencil. This is the statue of 
Pierre Paul Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the 
cavalier who discovered the fountain of the Greve. That 
fountain solved a mighty problem — the possibility of con- 
necting, by means of water communication, the Atlantic 
and the Mediterranean — the Graronne flowing into the one, 
with the Aude flowing into the other ; and the formation of 
the Canal du Midi, doubled at a stroke the value of the 
Mediterranean provinces of France. Francis I., although 
our James called him a " mere fechting fule," dreamt of 
this. Henri and Sully projected the scheme ; but it was 
only under Louis and Colbert that it was executed ; and 
the bold and resolute engineer — he lived three quarters of 
a century before Brindley — was Pierre Paul Biquet. This 
man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for a scheme — 
one of those gallant soldiers of an idea — who give up their 
lives to the task of making a thought a fact. He had 
laboured at least a dozen of weary years ere the court took 
up the plan. He had demonstrated the thing again and 
again to commissioners of notabilities, ere the first stone 
of the first loch was laid. The work went on ; twelve 
thousand " navvies " laboured at the task ; Biquet had 
sunk his entire fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil 
was all but accomplished. In the coming summer the 
Canal du Midi would be opened — when Biquet died — the 
great cup of his life's ambition brimming untasted at his 



THE CANAL DU MIDI. I73 

lips. Six months thereafter, a gay company of king's com- 
missioners, gracefully headed by Riquet's two sons, rode 
through the channel of the watercourses from Beziers to 
Toulouse, and returned the next week by water, leading a 
jubilant procession of twenty-three great barges, proceed- 
ing from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held on 
the Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days, all his 
plans haye been, one by one, carried out. His canal now 
runs to Agen, where it joins the Graronne ; while at the 
other end, it is led through the chain of marshes and la- 
goons which extend along the Mediterranean, from Perpig- 
nan to the delta of the Rhone, joining the " swift and ar- 
rowy " river at Beaucaire. 

I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great deal 
previously about this wind, and while at Beziers had the 
pleasure of making its personal acquaintance. This mistral 
is the plague and the curse of the Mediterranean provinces 
of France. The ancient historians mention it as sweeping 
gravel and stones up into the air. St. Paul talks of the 
south wind, which blew softly until there arose against it a 
fierce wind, called lEuroclydon — certainly the mistral. 
Madame de Sevigne paints it as " le tourbillon^ Vouregan^ 
tous les diables dechainH qui veulent hien emporter voire 
chateau ;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane does 
not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau, at least the 
ricketty villages of the peasants. I had but a taste of this 
wild, gusty, and most abominably drying and cutting wind ; 
for the gale which blew for a couple of days over Beziers 
formed, I was told, only a very modified version of the true 
mistral ; but it was quite enough to give a notion of the 
wind in the full height of its evil powers. The whole 
country was literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, 
so to speak, smoked. From an eminence, you could trace 



1 74 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

their line for miles by the columns of white powdered earth 
driven into the air. As for the paths you actually tra- 
versed, the ground-down gravel was blown from the ruts, 
leaving the way scarred, as it were, with ridgy seams, and 
often worn down to the level of the subsidiary stratum of 
rock. The streaky, russet-brown of the fields was speedily 
converted into one uniform grey. Never had I seen any- 
thing more intensely or dismally parched up. As for any 
tree or vegetable but vines and olives — whose very suste- 
nance and support is dust and gravel, thriving under the 
liability to such visitations — the thing was impossible. Nor 
was the dust by any means the only evil. The wind seemed 
poisonous ; it made the eyes — mine at all events — smart 
and water ; cracked the lips, as a sudden alternation from 
heat to cold will do ; caused a little accidentally inflicted 
scratch to ache and shoot ; and finally dried, hardened, and 
roughened the skin, until one felt in an absolute fever. 
The cold in the shade, let it be noted, was intense — a 
pinching, nipping cold, in noways frosty or kindly ; while 
in sheltered corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze 
of an unclouded sun darting right down upon the parched 
and gleaming earth. All this, however, I was told, formed 
but a modified attack of mistral. The true wind mingles 
with the flying dust a greyish or yellowish haze, through 
which the sun shines hot, yet cheerless. I had, however, a 
specimen of the wind, which quite satisfied me, and which 
certainly enables me to affirm, that the coldest, harshest, 
and most rheumatic easterly gale which ever whistled the 
fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and shivering 
streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and ambrosial zephyr, 
compared with the mistral of the ridiculously bepuffed cli- 
mate of the South of France. 

Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features of 



THE PEASANTRY OF THE OLIVE COUNTRY. 175 

tte olive country thoroughly into my head, I had a good 
deal of conversation with the scattered peasantry — a fierce, 
wild-looking set of people, dressed in the common blouse, 
but a perfectly dilBferent race from the quiet, mild, central 
and northern agriculturists. Their black, flashing eyes, so 
brimful of devilry — their wild, straight, black hair, shooting 
in straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce 
vehemence of gesticulation — the loud, passionate tone of 
their habitual speech — all mark the fiery and hot-blooded 
South. Gro into a cabaret, into the high, darkened room, 
set round with tables and benches, and you will think the 
whole company are in a frantic state of quarrel. Not at all 
— it is simply their way of conversing. But if a dispute 
does break out, they leap, and scream, and glare into each 
other's eyes like demons, and the ready knife is but too 
often seen gleaming in the air. Here in the South you will 
note the change in the style of construction of the farm- 
houses, which are clustered in bourgs. Everything is on a 
great scale, to give air, the grand object being to let the 
breeze in, and keep the heat out. Shade is the universal 
desideratum. Every auberge has its huge re^nise — a vast, 
gloomy shed, into which carts and diligences drive, where 
the mangers of the horses stand, and where you will often 
see the carriers stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie 
hotels, these remises, ponderously built of vast blocks of 
stone, look like enormous catacombs, or vaults ; and the 
stamping and neighing of the horses, and the rumbling of 
entering and departing vehicles, roll along the roof in 
thunder. 

Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of the South 
of France bourg, or agricultural village. Seen from a little 
distance, it had quite an imposing appearance — the white, 
commodious-looking mansions gleaming cheerily out through 



176 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

the dusky olive-grounds. A closer inspection, however, 
showed the real nakedness of the land. The high, white 
mansions became great clumsy barns — the lower stories 
occupied as living places, the windows above bursting with 
loads of hay and straw. The crooked, devious streets were 
paved with filthy heaps of litter and dung. Dilapidated 
ploughs and harrows — their wooden teeth worn down to the 
gjumps — lay hither and thither round the great gaunt, un- 
painted doorways. The window-shutters of every occupied 
room were shut as closely as port-holes in a gale of wind, 
and here and there a wandering pig or donkey, or a slat- 
ternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of sacking stretched 
before her door, or a purblind old crone knitting in the sun, 
formed the only moving objects which gave life to the 
dreary picture. 

In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found a cafe 
and a billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France will you 
not 1 Except in the merest jumble of hovels, you can 
hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing the crossed cues 
and balls figuring on a gaily painted house. You fnay not 
be able to purchase the most ordinary articles a traveller 
requires, but you can always have a game at pool. I have 
frequently found billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, in- 
habited entirely by persons of the rank of English agricul- 
tural labourers. At home, we associate the game with 
great towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion 
of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly 
rustic portion of the population, the game seems a necessary 
of life. And there are, too — contrary to what might have 
been expected — few or no make-shift-looking, trumpery ta- 
bles. The cafes in the Palais Royal, or in the fashionable 
boulevards, contain no pieces of furniture of this description 
more massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than 



RURAL BILLIARD PLAYING. {jj 

many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to the rank 
of villages. It has often struck me, that the billiard-table 
must have cost at least as much as the house in which it 
was erected ; but the thing seemed indispensable, and there 
it was in busy use all day long. A correct return of the 
number of billiard-tables in France would give some very 
significant statistics relative to the social customs and lives 
of our merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication 
of the habits of the people, should there be found to be five 
times as many billiard-tables in France as there are man- 
gles ; and I for one firmly believe that such would be the 
result of an impartial perquisition. Besides the lillard and 
the newspapers— ^little provincial rags, with which an Eng- 
lish grocer would scorn to wrap up an ounce of pigtail — 
there are, of course, cards and dominoes for the frequienters ; 
and they are in as great requisition all day as the balls and 
cues. I like — no man likes better — to see the toilers of 
the world released from their labours, and enjoying them- 
selves ; but after all there is something, to English ways of 
thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a couple of big, 
burly working men, sitting in the glare of the sun-light the 
best part of the day, wrangling over a greasy pack of cards, 
or rattling dominoes upon the little marble tables. I once 
remarked this to an old French gentleman, 

" True — too true," he replied ; " it was Bonaparte did 
the mischief He made — you know how great a propor- 
tion of the country youth of France — soldiers. When they 
returned — those who did return — they had garrison tastes 
and barrack habits ; and those tastes and habits it was 
which have brought matters to the pass, that you can hardly 
travel a league, even in rural France, without hearing the 
click of the billiard balls." 



8^ 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE TRACK-BOAT ON THE CANAL DU MIDI APPROACH TO THE MEDITERRANEAN 

SALT-MARSHES AND SALT-WORKS A CIRCUS THRASHING-MACHINE THE 

MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS CRAFT CETTE AND ITS MANUFACTURED WINES, 

WITH A priest's VIEWS ON GOURMANDISE. 

LEFT Beziers for the Mediterranean, Iby Pierre Paul 
Riquet's canal. The track-boat passes once a-day, taking 
upwards of thirty-five hours to make the passage from Tou- 
louse to Cette. The Beziers station is about a mile from 
the town ; and on approaching it early in the morning, I 
found a crowd of people collected on the banks, looking at 
men dragging the canal with huge hooks at the end of 
poles. They were searching for the body of a poor fellow 
from Beziers, who had drowned himself under very remark- 
able circumstances ; and just as the packet-boat came up, 
the corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from beneath 
it. The deceased was a decrotteur^ or boot-cleaner, and a 
light porter at Beziers — a quiet inoffensive man, who, by 
dint of untiring industry, and great self-denial, had scrap- 
ed together upwards of two hundred and fifty francs, all of 
which he lent another decrotteur^ without taking legal secu- 
rity for the money. After the stipulated term for the loan 
had elapsed, the poor lender naturally press^ for his cash, 
lie was put off from month to month with excuses ; and 



TRAVELLING BY THE CANAL DU MIDL 1 79 

when, at length, he became urgent for repayment, the debtor 
laughed in his face, told him to do his best and his worst, 
and get his money how he could. The decrotteur went 
away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged a pistol, 
with which he returned to the rascal borrower. 

" Will you pay me 1 — ay or no ?" he said. 

" No," replied the other ; " go about your business." 

The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired. 
Down went his antagonist, doubled up in a heap on the 
road, and away went the assassin as hard as his legs could 
carry him. to a bridge leading over the canal, from the pa- 
rapet of which he leaped into the water ; while, as he dis- 
appeared, the quasi murdered man got up again, with no 
other damage than a face blackened by the explosion of the 
pistol. He had fallen through terror, for he was absolutely 
unscathed. 

The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy and 
monotonous business enough. Mile after mle, and league 
after league, the boat is gliding along between grassy or 
rushy banks, and rows of poplar, and sometimes of acacia 
trees, the monotonous tramp of the team upon the bank 
mingling with the endless gurgle of the waters beneath. 
The towing paths are generally very lifeless. Now and 
then a solitary peasant, with his heavy sharp-pointed hoe — 
an implement, in fact, half hoe and half pick-axe — upon his 
shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by ; or a shepherd, 
whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their head, wander- 
ing to and fro in search of the greenest bits of pasture ; or 
a handful of jabbering women, from some neighbouring 
bourg, will be squatted along the water's edge, certainly not 
obeying Napoleon's injunction to wash their linge sale en 
famille^ but pounding away at sheets and shirts with heavy 
stones or wooden mallets — the counterparts of the instru- 



180 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

ments used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen, and there 
called " beetles." The bridges are shot cleverly. At a 
shout from the steersman, the postillion, who rides one of 
the hindmost horses of the team, jumps off, casts loose the 
tow-line, runs with the end of it to the centre of the bridge, 
drops it aboard as the boat comes beneath, catches it up 
again on the opposite side, flies back after his horses which 
have trotted very tranquilly a-head, hooks on the rope 
again, jumps into his saddle, cracks his long whip, and the 
boat is off again in full career long ere she has lost her 
former headway. Little of the country can be seen from 
the deck, but along the southern and eastern half of the 
canal you seldom lose sight of the dusty tops of the formal 
olive groves, varied now and then by a stony slope covered 
with ugly, sprawling vines, and as you approach the sea, 
dotted with white, little country houses — of which more 
hereafter — the glimpses of the changing picture being con- 
tinually set in a brown frame of sterile hills. 

The boats are long and narrow ; the cabins like corri- 
dors, but comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so that you 
can sleep in them, even if the boat be tolerably crowded, 
as well as in a diligence. If there be few passengers, you 
will have full-length room. The restaurant on board is 
excellent — as good as that on the Graronne boats, and very 
cheap. Let all the English travellers, however, beware of 
the steward's department on the Loire and Rhone steamers, 
in both of which I have been thoroughly swindled. The 
style of people who seemingly use the track-boat on the 
Canal du Midi, are the • rotonde class of diligence passen- 
gers. Going down to Cette, there were two or three fami- 
lies, almost entirely composed of females, aboard ; the elder 
ladies — horrid, snuffy old women, who were always having 
exclusive cups of chocolate or coffee, or little basins of 



THA VELLING FEENGH PEOPLE. \ g 1 

soup, and who never appeared to move from the spots on 
which they were deposited since the voyage began. 

Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very com- 
mon practice in France, where the people continually try, 
even in travelling, to keep their household goods about them. 
Look at the baggage of your Frenchman en voyage. All 
the old clothes of the last dozen of years are sure to be 
lugged about in it. There is, perhaps, a pormanteau, ex- 
clusively devoted to old boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard 
hat-boxes, with half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. 
The plague of all this baggage is dreadful ; but the pro- 
prietor would go through any amount of inconvenience rather 
than lose one stitch of his innumerable old hardes. 

After passing the headland and dull old town of Agde, 
the former crowned by the lighthouse I had seen from the 
road to Beziers, we fairly entered into the great zone of salt 
swamps which here line the Mediterranean. It was a deso- 
late and dreary prospect. The land on either side stretched 
away in a dead flat ; now dry and parched, again traversed 
by green streaks of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow 
pools of water. Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect 
jungle of huge bulrushes, stretching away as far as the eye 
could follow, and evidently teeming with wild-ducks, which 
rose in vast coveys, and flew landward or seaward in their 
usual wedge-shaped order of flight. The sea, to which we 
were approaching at a sharp angle, was still invisible, but 
you felt the refreshing savour of the brine in the air, and 
now and then you caught, sparkling for a moment in the 
bright, hot sunshine, a distant jet of feathery spray, as a 
heavier wave than common came thundering along the beach. 
Presently, the brown waste through which we were passing 
became streaked with whitish belts and patches — the salt 
left by the evaporation of the brine, which now begins to 



182 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

soak and well through the spongy soil, and presently to ex- 
pand into lakes and shallow belts of water. Across these, 
long rows of stakes for nets, stretched away in endless 
column, and here and there a rude, light boat floated, or a 
fisherman slowly waded from point to point. Grreat herons 
and cranes stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and 
flocks of sandpipers and plovers ran along the white salt- 
powdered sand. Then came on the left, or landward side, 
a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of them white, 
others of a dark brown, scattered over a space of scores of 
square miles. I wondered who were the inhabitants of this 
lake of the dismal swamp, and accordingly pointed out the 
houses, as I conceived them, to the captain. 

" Houses, monsieur !" he said ; " these are all salt heaps. 
Salt is the harvest of this country, and they stack it in these 
piles, just as the people inland do their corn. When the 
heap is not expected to be wanted soon, they thatch it with 
^•eeds and grass ; but if they expect to get a quick sale, they 
don't take the trouble. So you see that some of the heaps 
are dark, and the others like snow-balls." 

" But if there come rain ?" 

" Not much fear of that in this part of the world. There 
may be a shower, but the salt is so hard and compacted, that 
it will do little more than wash the dirt ofi"." 

Presently we came to the salt-making basins — great 
shallow lakes, divided by dykes into squares somewhat in the 
style of a chess-board ; and here the solitude of the expanse 
was broken by the figures of the workmen clambering along 
the narrow dykes to watch and superintend the progress of 
evaporation. By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly rec- 
tangular cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by 
two horses, one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt 
from the pans, or pools, to the heaps in which it was stored. 



THE SALT HARVEST. 183 

Here and there, where the ground rose a little, a thin crop 
of maize, or barley, appeared to have been cultivated ; and 
it was probably some such harvest that I saw being thrashed 
by the peculiar process in use all through Provence and 
southern Languedoc. There are very few thrashing mills, 
even in the best cultivated parts of France. Over the vast 
proportion of the kingdom, the orthodox old flail bears un- 
disturbed sway ; but the farmer of the far South chooses 
rather to employ horse than human muscles in the work. 
He lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a circular pave- 
ment, generally of brick, a little larger than the ring at 
Astley's. All along the swampy shores of the Mediterra- 
nean, traversed by the delta of the Rhone, and stretching 
westward towards Spain, there feed upon the scanty herbage 
great herds of semi-wild horses, said to have been originally 
of Arabian descent. These creatures are caught, when 
needed, much in the style of the Landes desert steeds, and 
every farmer has a right to a certain number corresponding 
with the size of his farm. When, then, the harvest has been 
cut, and the thrashing time comes on, you may see, approach- 
ing the steading, an unruly flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, 
most of them grey, driven by three or four mounted peasants 
— capital cavaliers — each with a long lance like a trident 
held erect, and a lasso coiled at the saddle-bow. Then work 
commences : the wild steeds are tolerably docile, although 
shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into the mouth of 
each, with a long bridle attached. The creatures are ar- 
ranged in a circle on the edge of the brick flooring, exactly 
as when Mr. Widdicombe or M. Franconi prepare for an 
unrivalled feat of horsemanship upon eight bare-backed 
steeds by the " Whirl-wind Rider," surnamed the •' Pet of 
the Ring," or the famous artiste, " Herr Bridleinski, the 
Hungarian Tamer of the Flying Steeds " The sheaves of 



134 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

corn are placed just where the active grooms at Astley's 
rake the sawdust thickest ; and then, in answer to the thun- 
dering exhortations of Mr. Widdicomhe and his coadjutors 
in the centre of the ring, and the cracking of the whips, the 
horses, held by their long bridles, go plunging and rearing 
round the arena, and, after more or less obstreperousness, 
settle into a shambling trot, treading out the corn as they 
go, and preserving the pace for a wonderful length of time. 
At night, the creatures are released, and left to shift for 
themselves. They seldom stray far from the farm, and are 
easily recaptured and brought back to work next day. The 
four-legged thrashers, I am sorry to say, are rather scurvily 
treated, for they get nothing in return for their labour better 
than straw — a poor diet for a day's trot. The first time I 
saw this equestrian thrashing-machine in motion, the effect 
was very odd. I could not dissociate it from the equestrian 
performance of some wandering company of high-bred steeds 
and '• star riders." The only thing that seemed strange was, 
that there should be no spectators ; and, after a little time, 
that there should be no human performers. Round and at 
a round, long, irregular trot, went the lanky brutes — some- 
times breaking out, plunging, and taking it into their heads, 
as their Eochester cousin, hired by Mr. Winkle, did, to go 
sideways, but always reduced to obedience by a few smack- 
ing persuaders from the whip. But where was the illustri- 
ous Whirlwind Rider, who should have stood on all their 
necks at once, or the famous Bridleinski, who should have 
stood on all their haunches 1 No shrill clown's voice echoed 
from the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master 
of the ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to Mr. Wid- 
dicombe, who, if he had been on board the boat, would in- 
fallibly have taken refuge in the run, rather than contem- 
plated such a melancholy mockery of his mission and his 
functions. 



CETTE. 1 85 

At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet of 
water, ruffled by a steady breeze, before which one of the 
Lateen-rigged craft of the Mediterranean was bowling 
merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on either side of 
her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon, or Etang, of Thau, 
a salt-water lake about a dozen of miles long, and opening 
up by a narrow channel — on both banks of which rises the 
flourishing town of Cette — into the Mediterranean. For 
the greater part of its length, only a strip of sand and 
shingle interposes between the lake and the sea ; and as 
the steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of the 
canal, paddled its way to Cette, we could see every moment 
the surf of the open ocean rising beyond the barrier. The 
passage along the Etang is pretty and characteristic. On 
the left lie, in a long blue chain, the hills of the Cevennes 
— distance hiding their barren bleakness from the eye — 
while along the inland edge of the water, village after vil- 
lage, the houses sparklingly white, are mirrored in the lake, 
with a little fleet of lateen-rigged fishing-boats, the sails 
usually very ragged, pursuing their occupation before each 
hamlet. Now and then we were passed by huge feluccas, 
rolling away before the wind, and bound for the Canal du 
Midi, with great cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half 
as high as the mast — the lateen-sail having to be half furled 
in consequence, and the captain shouting his orders to the 
steersman as from the top of a stack in a barn-yard. The 
scene reminded me greatly of the hay -barges of the Thames 
bringing up to London the crops of Kent and Essex. 

At length we were landed among groups of Mediter- 
ranean sailors, with Phrygian caps — otherwise conical red 
night-caps — and ugly-looking knives in their belts. The 
women had the usual Naiad peculiarity of short petticoats, 
and wore them, too, of a showy striped stuff, which remind- 



186 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

ed me of the Newhaven fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This 
Phrygian cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary 
cap of liberty, which our good neighbours are so fond of 
sticking on the stumps of what they call " trees of liberty " 
— of painting, of carving, of apostrophising, of waving, of 
exalting — which, in short, they are so fond of doing every- 
thing with — but wearing. The effect, as a head-dress, on the 
Cette fishermen, was not unpleasant. The long conical top, 
and tassel, give a degree of drapery to the figure, and the 
cap itself seems luxuriously comfortable to the head. 

A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through 
busier streets than I had seen for many a day, by open 
counting-houses, and under the great lateen yards of feluc- 
cas lying in rows with their bows to the quays, and across 
a light wooden swing bridge, haunted by just such tarry 
mortals as you see about St. Katherine's docks ; and- at 
length I was set down . at the wide portal of the Hotel de 
Poste — a straggling airy hostelry, such as befits the hot 
and glaring South. Still, I had not seen the Mediterranean. 
The great coup was yet unachieved : so, getting five words 
of instruction from the waiter, I hurried through some nar- 
row streets, crossed two or three more swing-bridges, skirt- 
ed half-a-dozen boat-building yards, very like similar estab- 
lishments in Wapping, and then suddenly emerged upon 
the open beach, with sand-hills, and long bent or sea-grass 
rustling in the soft southern wind, with the blue of the 
great inland sea stretching away, deep and lovely, before 
me ; and with the hissing water and foam-laced inner wave- 
lets of the surf creaming to my feet. A sensation, it will 
be admitted, is a pleasant thing in these hlase days, and the 
Mediterranean afforded one. There came on me a vague, 
crowded, and indistinct vision, at once, of schoolboy recol- 
lections, and many a subsequent day-dream — of Roman 



THE MEDITEBBANEAM. . 187 

galleys, triremes and quadremes^ with brazen beaks and 
hundred oars, moving like the legs of a centipede ; of all the 
picturesque craft of the middle ages ; of the fleets of 
Venice ; the argosies and tall merchant-barques which 
carried on the rich commerce of northern Italy ; of the Al- 
gerine corsairs, which so often bore down upon the Lion of 
St. Marks ; of the quick-pulling piratical craft ; the rovers 
who pillaged from the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of 
Hercules ; and of the whole tribe of modern Mediterranean 
vessels, which thousands and thousands of pictures have 
made classic wii^ their high peaked sails, and striped gaudy 
canvass ; the whole tribe of feluccas and polacres, whereof, 
as I gazed, I could see here and there the scattered sails, 
gleaming like bird-wings upon the sea. The Mediterranean 
is, after all, the sea of the world : we associate it with 
everything classic and beautiful either in art or climate ; and 
although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, 
and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed vessels, would fly 
before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel 
boatman would consider a inere puff", — still there is some- 
thing racily and specially picturesque about the black-eyed, 
swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals, and something dearly 
familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the sails around 
which they cluster. From the beach I went to the harbour, 
which was crowded almost to its entrance ; but, for reasons 
to be presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not 
one Union-jack among the Stars and Stripes — Dutch and 
Brazilian ensigns, which were flying from every mast-head. 
Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury places. It will 
be remembered that " there shrinks no ebb in that tideless 
sea ;" and accordingly, when the drainage of a town or a 
district is led into the harbours, there it stays. Marseilles 
enjoys a most unenviable notoriety in this respect. The 



188 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

horrible fluid beneatli you becomes, in the summer time, 
despite its salt, absolutely putrid ; and I was told that there 
had been instances in which it bred noisome and abhorrent 
insects and reptiles — that, literally and absolutely, " slimy 
things did crawl with legs, upon the slimy sea." 

As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat gases 
perpetually rising, must be smelt to be appreciated. The 
Marseillaise, however, have sturdy noses, which do not 
yield to trifles. They say the dirt preserves the ships, and 
besides, adds Dumas — a great favourer of the ancient 
colony of the Glreeks — " what a fool a m#n must be, who, 
under such a glorious sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on 
mud and water !" 

The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it has no 
particular transparency of water to recommend it. Brave its 
foulness, however, and go and visit the quays for the fishing- 
boats, as they are returning from their night's toil. Mark 
the Catalan craft — you will perhaps remember that the re- 
doubted Monte Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a 
Catalan village near Marseilles: — did you ever see more ex- 
quisitely-foi-med boats afloat on the water % They swim ap- 
parently on the very surface — the curve of the gunwale 
rising to a gondola peak at stem and stern ; but yet they 
are the most buoyant sea-boats, and I suspect their speed, 
particularly in light winds, would put even that of the 
Yankee pilot-boats to a severe test. Look, too, at their 
cargoes, as the slippery masses are being shovelled up in 
glancing, gleaming spadefuls, to the quays. Did you ever 
see such odd fish ? Respectable haddocks, decent and well- 
to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never be seen in 
such strange, eccentric company — among fellows with heads 
bigger than bodies, and eyes in their backs, and tails absurd- 
ly misplaced, and feelers or legs where no fish with well- 



CETTE ''MADE'' WINES. 189 

regulated minds would dream of having such appendages — 
never was there seen such a strange omnium gatherum of 
piscatory eccentricities as the fishes of the Mediterranean. 

I said that it was good — good for our stomachs — to see 
no English bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is 
a great manufacturing place, and that what they manufac- 
ture there is neither cotton nor wool, Perigord pies, nor 
:ilheims biscuits,— but wine. " Ici^'' will a Cette industrial 
write with the greatest coolness over his Porte Cochere — 
" Id onfabrique des vinsJ^ All the wines in the world, in- 
deed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order 
for Johannisberg, or Tokay — nay, for all I know, for the 
Falernian of the Romans, or the Nectar of the gods — and 
the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you. They 
are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have brought the 
noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make 
our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitioners pale and 
wan with envy. But the great trade of the place is not so 
much adulterating as concocting wine. Cette is well 
situated for this noble manufacture. The wines of southern 
Spain are brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valen- 
cia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from 
the Graronne by the Canal du Midi ; and the hot and fiery 
Rhone wines are floated along the chain of etangs and 
canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw materials, and, 
of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be hard 
if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good 
imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up 
bad Bordeaux with violet powders and rough cider — colour 
it with cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it 
is precious Chateau Margaux — vintage of '25. Cham- 
pagne, of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you wish 
sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant 1 The Cette 



190 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines 
from the neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price 
per bottle. Do you wish to make new Claret old ? A Cette 
manufacturer will place it in his oven, and, after twenty- 
four hours' regulated application of heat, return it to you nine 
years in bottle. Port, sherry, and Madeira, of course, are 
fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine 
and brandy, for a stoc'k, and with half the concoctions in a 
druggist's shop for seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very 
capital and emporium of the tricks and rascalities of the 
wine-trade, and it supplies almost all the Brazils, and a 
great porportion of the northern European nations with their 
after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out 
thousands of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of Jo- 
hannisberg. Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the fine 
qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly prized by 
the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag fluttered plen- 
tifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a cus- 
tomer to the Cette industrials — or, at all events, he helps 
in the distribution of their wares. The old French West 
Indian colonies also patronise their ingenious countrymen 
of Cette ; and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin 
and Romance Conti, made of low Rhone, and low Burgundy 
brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated phial. 
I fear, however, that we do come in — in the matter of " fine 
golden sherries, at 22s. 9 \~2d. a dozen," or "peculiar old- 
crusted port, at l5. 9<:<?." — for a share of the Cette manufac- 
tures ; and it is very probable that after the wine is fabri- 
cated upon the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still fur- 
ther improved upon the banks of the Thames. 

At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side of a 
benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair, but cheeks 
and gills of the most approved rubicund hue, who first eyed 



THE PRIEST OF WINES. ~ 191 

the dishes through a pair of vast golden spectacles, and 
meditated profoundly ere he made a choice — waving away 
the eternal houilli with an expression which showed that he 
was not the man to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled 
beef. This worthy, hearing me making interest with the 
waiter for a peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufac- 
ture, smiled paternally, and with an approving countenance : 
I would recommend," he said, softly, and in a fat voice, 
" you to try Masdeu ; and, if you please, I will join you. I 
know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old. C est un hon enfant P 
And then, in a severe voice, " The Masdeu, William." 

The priest was clearly at home ; and presently the wine 
came. It had the brightly deep glow of Burgundy, a bou 
quet not unlike claret, and tasted like the lightest and 
purest port glorified and etherealised ; in fact, it was a rare 
good wine. 

" Ah !" said the priest, pouring out a second glass ; 
" the vineyard where this was grown once belonged to the 
Church. The Knights of the Temple once drank this 
wine, and the Knights of St. John after them. It is a 
good wine." 

" The. Church understood the grape," I remarked. " I 
have drunk Hermitage where the recluse fathers tended 
the vines, and have always looked upon Rhone wine as one 
of the reasons why the Holy Father at Avignon was long- 
so loath to be the Holy Father at Rome." 

" Wine," replied my compotator, " is not forbidden, 
either by the laws of God or the Church ; and never was. 
Only the Yulgate denounces mixed wines." 

" By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ," said 
I, " I presume you understand adulterated, not watered 
liquors. If so, we are in a sad city of sinners." 

The priest smiled, but changed the topic. 



192 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

" Masdeu," he said, " is Catalan ; you know tlie wine is 
grown not far from Perpignan, where the people are half 
Spanish, Do you know the meaning of Masdeu % It is a 
very old name for the vineyard, and it signifies ' Grod's field.' " 

I thought of the difference of national character be- 
tween the French and the Germans — " Grod's field " in 
France, a vineyard ; " God's field " in Germany, a church- 
yard. 

" The ancient Romans," continued my friend, " liked the 
wines, the sweet wines of this country, better than any 
other growths in Gaul." 

" The Romans," I said, " had a most swinish taste in 
wines, and dishes too. The Falernian was boiled syrup, 
cooked up with drugs, and tempered with salt water. Only 
think of mixing brine with your tipple ; or of placing it in 
?i fumariu7n^ to imbibe the flavour of the smoke ! The Ro- 
mans were mere liqueur drinkers. Aniseed, or maraschino, 
or parfait amour, or any trash of that kind, would have 
suited tliem better than genuine, fine-flavoured wine." 

" Pourtant ,-" said my friend ; " you go too far ; ma- 
raschino and parfait amour are not trash. Although I 
agree with you, that the palate which eternally appeals for 
sweets is in a morbid condition. But the Romans, after, 
all, must have had tongues of peculiar nicety for some sa- 
vours. A Roman epicure could tell, by the relative ten- 
derness, the leg upon which a partridge had been in the 
habit of sitting at night, and whether a carp had been 
caught above or below a certain bridge." 

" Or was -it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences of 
Juvenal floating about me, — " was it not a certain sewer — 
the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps ?" 

" Only," argued the priest in continuation, " I could 
never understand their fondness for lampreys." 



UNE CUISINE FRANC AISE. 193 

" Perliaps," said I, " it is Ibecause you never tasted tliem 
after they had been fattened on slaves." 

•' Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing. 

By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone. We 
had the remains of the dessert, the pick-tooths, and another 
bottle of the Catalan wine to ourselves. 

'• You French," I ventured, " hardly seem worthy of 
your fine wines. You never appear to care about them ; 
you seldom sit a moment after dinner to enjoy them ; and 
if you relish anything more than another, it is Champagne, 
which, after all, is but a baby taste. All your very best 
wine goes to England ; most of your second-class growths 
to Russia ; and your lower sorts to the northern nations on 
the Baltic. I don't think there is anything like a gener- 
ally cultivated taste for good wine in France, and yet you 
are supreme in the cuisine P 

" It was the fermiers generaux^ and the financiers^'' re- 
plied the priest, " who made French cookery what it is. 
They tried to outshine the old noblesse at table ; they re- 
vived trufSes, and they had the first dishes of green peas, 
at eight hundred francs a plat. Next to the financiers 
were the chevaliers and the abbes. OA, nion Dieu ! qiiHls 
etaint gourmands ces chers aonis ; the chevaliers all swag- 
ger and dash ; the sword right up and down — shoulder-knot 
flaunting — a bold bearing and a keen eye. The abbes, in 
velvet and silk — as fat as carps, as sleek as moles, and as 
soft-footed as cats — little and sly — perfect enjoy ers of the 
gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more snug than an 
abbe commianclataire I He had consideration, position, 
money ; no one to please, and nothing to do." 

" These were the good old times," I said. 

" Ma foi V replied the clerical dignitary ; " they were 
bad times for France in general ; but they were rare times 
9 



194 - CLABET AND OLIVES. 

for the few wlio lived upon it. There were Frenchmen, at 
any rate, then, who understood wine ; at least, they drunk 
enough of it to understand the science, from the alpha to 
the omega." 

We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking; and 
a quarter of an hour afterwards I was rattling along the 
Montpellier and Cette railway, with a ticket for Lunel in 
my pocket. 



CHAPTEE XIIL 

MORE ABOUT THE OLIVE-TREE THE GATHERING OF THE OLIVES LUNEL A 

NIGHT WITH A SCORE OF MOSQUITOES — AIGUES-MORTES THE DEAD LAND- 
SCAPE THE MARSH FEVER A STRANGE CICERONE THE LAST CRUSADING 

KING THE SALTED BURGUNDIANS THE POISONED CAMISARDS THE MEDI- 
TERRANEAN. 

PASSING", for tlie present, Montpellier, where people 
with consumptions used to he sent to swallow dust, as 
likely to he soothing to the lungs, and to hreathe the halmy 
zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made straight for Lu- 
nel, in order to get from thence to one of the strangest old 
towns in France — Aigues-Mortes. All around us, as wo 
hurried on, were vines and olives — a true land of wine and 
oil. The olive-tree did not improve on acquaintance ; it 
got uglier and uglier — more formal, and more cast-iron 
looking, the more you saw of it. And then it was invaria- 
bly planted in rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the 
notion of a prim old garden — never of a wood. Like all 
fruit-trees in France, the olive is most carefully trimmed, 
and clipped, and tortured, and twisted into the most ap- 
proved or fashionable shape. The man who can make his 
oliviers look most like umbrellas is the great cultivator ; 
and the services of the peasants who have got a reputation 
for olive dressing are better paid than those of any agricul- 
tural labourers in France. They are eternally snipping and 



196 CLARET AND OLIVES. '" 

slashing, and turning and twisting the tree, until the unfor- 
tunate specimens have had any small degree of natural ease 
and harmony which they possessed assiduously wrenched 
out of them. And yet there are people on the South of 
France who are enthusiastic in the hidden beauty of the 
olive. There are technical terms for all the particular 
spreads and contortions given to the branches ; and the 
olive amateur will hold forth to you by the hour upon the 
subtle charms of each. A gentleman from beyond Mar- 
seilles has dilated with rapture to me on his delight, after 
a residence in Normandy, in returning again to the hot 
South, and revisiting the dear olives, so prim, and orderly, 
and symmetrical — not like the huge, straggling, sprawling 
oaks and elms of the North, growing up in utter defiance of 
all rule and system. 

The olives of France, this gentleman informed me, are 
very inferior to the trees of a couple of generations ago. 
Towards the close of the last century, there was a winter 
night of intense frost ; and when the morning broke, the 
trees were nearly smitten to the core. That year there was 
not an olive gathered in Provence or Languedoc. The next 
season, some of the stronger and younger trees partially re- 
vived, and slips were planted from those to which the axe 
had been applied ; but the entire species of the tree, he 
assured me, had fallen off — had dwindled, and pined, and 
become stunted ; and the profits of olive cultivation had 
faded with it. The gentleman spoke on the subject with a 
degree of unction which would have suited the fall, not of 
the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe which coloured 
his whole life. He was himself an olive proprietor ; and 
very likely his fortunes fell on the fatal night as many 
points as the thermometer. On our way to Lunel we saw 
the olive-gathering just beginning ; but, alas ! it had none 



THE OLIVE GATHERING. 197 

of the gaiety and bright associations of the vintage. On 
the contrary, it was as business-like and unexciting as weed- 
ing onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants 
— the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed — were 
clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket 
tied before him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. 
Occasionally,, the olive-gatherers had spread a white cloth 
beneath the tree, and were shaking the very ripe fruit down ; 
but there was neither jollity nor romance about the process. 
The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its cul- 
ture, its manuring, and clipping, and trimming, and graft- 
ing — the gathering of its fruits, and their squeezing in the 
mill, when the ponderous stone goes round and round in the 
glutinous trough, crushing the very essence out of the oily 
pulps — while the fat, oleaginous stream pours lazily into the 
greasy vessels set to receive it ; — all this is as prosaic and 
uninteresting as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society 
were presiding in spirit over the operations. And, after 
all, what could be expected % '• Grapes," said a clever 
Frenchman, " are wine-pills" — the notion of conviviality and 
mirth is ever attached to them ; and the vintagers, when 
stripping the loaded branches, have their minds involunta- 
rily carried forward to the joyous ultimate results of their 
labours. But who — our friends the Russians, and their 
cousins the Esquimaux excepted — could possibly be jolly 
over the idea of oil ? It may act balsamically and sooth- 
ingly ; and the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the 
bright decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards 
the production of a pleasant association of ideas ; but still 
the elevated and poetic feelings connected with the tree are 
remote and dim. 

It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled to 
decide the dispute between Pallas and Neptune, as to which 



198 CLAEET AND OLIVES. 

should baptize the rising Athens, it was determined that 
the honour should belong to whichever of the twain pre- 
sented the greatest gift to man. Neptune struck the earth, 
and a horse sprung to day. Minerva v/aved her hand, and 
the olive-tree grew up before the conclave. The goddess 
won the day, inasmuch as the sapient assemblage decided 
that the olive, as an emblem of peace, was better than the 
horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this ques- 
tion to Olympus. How could the olive or the horse be 
emblems before they were created ? And, even if they were 
emblems, was not the point at issue the best gift — not the 
best allegorical symbol ? I beg, therefore, to assure Nep- 
tune that I consider him to have been an ill-used indivi- 
dual, and to express a hope that, if he should ever again 
come into power, he will not forget my having paid my 
respects to him in his adversity. 

I do not know if I have anything very particular to re- 
cord respecting Lunel, which is a quiet, stupid, shadowy 
place, but that I passed the night engaged in mortal combat 
with a predatory band of mosquitoes. I was warned before 
going to bed, to take care how I managed the operation, 
and to whip myself through the gauze curtains so as to 
allow nothins; to enter en suite. The bed — I don't know 
why — had been placed in the middle of the room and the filmy 
net curtains, like fairy drapery, were snugly tucked in be- 
iieath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly, I 
distinguished a little card, accidentally left adhering to 
the net, which informed me that it was the fabrication of 
those wondrous lace-machines of Nottingham ; and I trusted 
that as Britannia rules the waves, she would also baffle the 
mosquitoes'. Perhaps it was my own fault that she did not. 
I remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable description 
of doing the wretched insects in question by leaping sud- 



A NIGHT WITH THE MOSQUITOES. 199 

denly into bed, like harlequin through a clock-dial, and 
frantically closing up the momentary opening, and I per- 
formed the feat in question with as much agility as I could. 
But what has befallen the gallant captain, also on that night 
befel me. Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like the Whigs into 
office — through the most infinitesimal crevices — but with 
the entrance the resemblance ceases — once in office, with 
the country sleeping tolerably comfortably, the Whigs do 
nothing. Not so, the mosquitoes. Their policy is perfectly 
different, and their energies vastly greater. For a true 
sketch of the style of mosquito administration, I must 
again refer to Hall. His picture is true — true to a bite, to 
a scratch, to a hum. I might paint it again, but any one 
can see the original. So I content myself with simply 
stating that from eleven o'clock, p. m., till an unknown hour 
next morning, I was leaping up and down the bed, striking 
myself furious blows all over, but never, apparently, hitting 
my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and then occasion- 
ally sinking into a momentary doze to be roused by that 
loud, clear trumpet of war — the very music of spite and 
pique and greediness of blood, circling round and round in 
the darkness, and ever coming nearer and nearer, till at 
last it ceased, and then came — the bite, as regularly as the 
applause after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my 
appearance next morning looking exactly as if I had been 
attacked in the night by measles, the mumps, swollen face, 
and erysipelas. 

Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no public 
vehicle, because there is no travelling public ; and so I 
hired a ricketty, shandry-dan looking affair, to take me on • 
and away we started, under a perfect blaze of hot, sickly 
sunshine. The road ran due south, through the vineyards 
and oliyes, but they gradually faded away as the soil got 



200 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

more and more spongy, and presently we saw before us a 
waste of the same sort as that which I have described on 
approaching the sea by the Canal dii Midi. Shallow pools, 
salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and silent, glaring 
in the sunshine — the watchful crane, the sole liring creature 
to be seen amid these desolate swamps. It struck me that 
John Bunyan, had he ever seen a landscape like this 
strange, stagnant expanse of dreariness, would have made 
grand use of it in that great prose poem of his. Perhaps 
ne would have called it " Dead Corpse Land," or the Slough 
— not of Despond, but of Despair. Presently we found the 
road running upon a raised embankment, with two great 
lakes, spotted with rushy islands on either hand, and be- 
fore us a grim, grey tower, with an ancient gateway — the 
gates or portcullis long since removed, but a Gothic arch 
still spanning the roughly-paved causeway. As we rattled 
beneath it, two or three lounging douaniers came forth, and 
looked lazily at us ; and presently we saw the grey walls of 
Aigues-Mortes rising, massive . and square, above the level 
lines of the marshes, fronted by one lone minaret, called the 
" Tower of Constance" — a gloomy steeple-prison, where, in 
the time of the Camisards, a crowd of women were confined 
— the wives and daughters of the brave Protestants of the 
Cevennes, who fought their country inch by inch against the 
dragoons of Louis Quatorze, and who— the prisoners, I mean 
— were forced to swallow poison by the agents of that right 
royal and religious king, the pious hero and Champion of 
the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside the town looks 
like a mere fortification — you see nothing but the sweep of 
the massive walls reflected in the stagnant waters which lie 
dead around them. Not a house-top appears above the 
ramparts. It is only by the thin swirlings of the wood-fire 
smoke that you know that human life exists behind that 



A m UES-MOli TES. 201 

blank and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep 
Gothic arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy, silent 
streets, the houses grey and ghastly, and many ruinous and 
deserted. The rotten remnants of the green jaloicsies were 
mouldering week by week away, and moss and lichens were 
creeping up the walls ; many roofs had fallen, and of some 
houses only fragments of wall remained. The next moment 
we were traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of 
stone, brick, and rotten wood, with patches of dismal garden- 
ground interspersed, and all round the dim, grey, silent 
houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes could, and once 
did, hold about ten thousand people. It was a city built in 
whim by a king, the last of the royal crusaders, Louis IX. 
of France. By him and his immediate descendants, it was 
esteemed a holy place — the crusading port. The walls 
built round it, and which still remain — as the empty armour, 
after the knight who once filled it is dead and gone — were 
erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of Dami- 
etta, and all sorts of privileges .were granted to the inhabi- 
tants. But one privilege the old kings of France could not 
grant : they could not, by any amount of letters patent, or 
any seize of seals, confer immunity from fever ; and Aigues- 
Mortes has been dying of ague ever since it was founded. 
In its early times, the influence of royal favour struggled 
long and well against disease : one man down, another came 
on. What loyal Frenchman would refuse to go from hot 
fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain number of months, and 
then to his long home, if it were to pleasure a descendant 
of St. Louis ? But the time and the influences of the Holy 
Wars went by, and the kings of France withdrew their smiles 
from Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King 
Death, had it all his own way. Funerals far outnumbered 
births or weddings, and gradually the life faded and faded 



202 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

from the stone-girt town, as the ebbing tide leaves a pier. 
Cette gave it the finishing stroke. A crowd of the inhabi- 
tants emigrated en masse to Riquet's city: and nere now is 
Aigues-Mortes — coffin-like Aigues-Mortes — with about a 
couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving their 
best against the marsh fever, among the ruined houses and 
within the smouldering walls of this ancient Glothic city. 

In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish hotel, not 
much above the rank of an auberge, and where I was about 
as lonely as in the vast caravansary at Bagnerre. The land- 
lord himself — a staid, decent man — waited at my solitary 
dinner, 

" Monsieur," he said, '' is an artist, or a poet ?" 

" What made him think so ?" 

" Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes — ^no 
traveller ever turned aside across the marshes, to visit theit 
poor old decayed town. There was no trade, no coiniiiis 
voyageiirs. The people of Nismes and Montpellier were 
afraid of the fever ; and even if they were not, why should 
they come there ? It was no place for pleasure on a holi- 
day — a man would as soon think of amusing himself in a 
hospital or a morgue, as in Aigues-Mortes." 

I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I felt 
it difficult to conceive how people could continue to remain 
in a place cursed by nature with a perpetual chronic plague. 
My host informed me that those who lived well and copi- 
ously, were well clothed, well lodged, and under no neces- 
sity to be out early and late among the marshes, fared toler- 
ably. They might have an ague-fit now and then, but when 
once well-seasoned they did pretty well. It was the poorer 
class who sufi'ered, particularly in spring and autumn, when 
vegetation was forming and withering, and the steaming 
mists came out thickest over the fens. People seldom died 



MY CIGERONJS IN AIGUES-MOBTES. 203 

with tlie first attack ; but the subtle disease hung about them, 
and returned again and again, and v/ore, and tugged, and 
exhausted their energies — kept nibbling, in fact, at body 
and soul, till, in too many cases, the disease-besieged man 
surrendered, and his soul marched out. I asked again, then, 
how the poor people remained in such a hot-bed of pestilence? 
" Que voulez vous^' was the reply — " the greater part can't 
help it ; they were born here, and they have a place here ; 
— at Nismes, or Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have 
no place. Besides, they are accustomed to it ; they look 
upon fevers as one of the conditions of their lives, like eat- 
ing and drinking ; and, besides, they have no energy for a 
change. The stuff has been taken out of them ; you will 
see what a sallow, worn-out people we have at Aigues-Mortes. 
They can get a living here, but they would be overwhelmed 
anywhere else." 

The landlord had previously recommended a cicerone to 
me, assuring me that I would not find him an ordinary man, 
that he was a sort of half-gentleman, and a scholar, and that 
be knew everything about Aigues-Mortes better than any- 
body else in it. Accordingly, I was presently introduced to 
M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man, dressed in 
rusty black, and wearing — hear it, ye degenerate days ! — 
powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean looked like a 
broken-down schoolmaster, some touches of pedantry still 
giving formality to the humble sliding gait, and bent, bow- 
ing form. His face was nearly as wrinkled as Voltaire's, but 
he had black eyes which gleamed like a ferret's when you 
show him a rabbit. 

In company with this old gentleman I passed a wander- 
ing day in and round Aigues-Mortes, rambling from gate to 
gate, scrambling up broken stairs to the battlements, and 
threading our way amid dim lanes, half choked up with rub- 



204 GLABET AND OLIVES, 

bish, from one ghastly old tower to another. All this while 
my guide's tongue was eloquent. He gesticulated like the 
most fiercely fidgetty member of young France, and the fer- 
ret's eye gleamed as though upon a whole warren of rabbits. 
Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great subject, his one passion, 
his one idea. Aigues-Mortes was -the bride of his enthu- 
siasm, the soul of his body. He had been born in Aigues- 
Mortes ; he had lived in it ; he had had the fever in it ; and 
he hoped to die in it, and be buried among the stilly 
marshes. How well he knew every crumbling stone, every 
little Grothic bartizan, every relic of an ancient chapel, every 
gloomy tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by ghosts. 
His mind flew back every moment to the days of the splen- 
did founding of Aigues-Mortes — to the crusading host, 
whose glory crowded it with armour, and banners, and cloth 
of gold, assembled round their king, St. Louis, and bound 
for Palestine. On the seaward side of the walls, Auguste 
showed me rings sunk in the stone, and to these rings, he 
said, the galleys and caravels of the king had been fastened. 
The sea is about two miles and a half distant, but the traces 
of the canal which led to it, are still visible amid the marsh 
and sand, so that, right beneath the walls, upon the smooth, 
unraoving agucB Qnortes — whence, of course, Aigue-Mortes — 
floated the fleet of the Crusade, made fast to the ramparts 
of the fortress of the Crusade. And so Saint Louis sailed 
with a thousand ships, standing proudly upon the poop, while 
the bishops round him raised loud Latin chants, and the 
warriors clashed their harness. The king wore the pilgrim's 
scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long and earnestly did my 
cicerone dilate upon the evil fortunes of the crusade — how, 
indeed, in the beginning it seemed to prosper, and how Da- 
mietta was stormed ; — but the Saracens had their turn, and 
the King of France, and many of his best paladdins were 



MY CIGERONE IN AIGUES-MOETES. 205 

soon prisoners in the Paynim tents. Question of their ran- 
som being raised, " A king of France," said Louis, " is not 
bought or sold with money. Take a city— a city for a king 
of France." The sentence and the sentiment are pictur- 
esque ; but, after all, there is not much in one or the other. 
However, the followers of Mahound agreed. Louis was re- 
stored to France, and Damietta to its former owners ; the 
rest of the European prisoners being thrown into the bar- 
gain for eight thousand gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, 
was too holy and too restless a personage to remain long at 
home, so that Aigues-Mortes soon saw him again ; and this 
time he departed waving above his head the crown of thorns. 
The infidels had laid hands on him the first time, but a 
fiercer enemy now grappled with the king — the plague 
clutched him ; and though a monarch of France could not 
be bought or sold for any number of gold bezants, the 
plague had him cheap — in fact, for an old song. " He died," 
says that bold writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you 
oflf the most interesting history, all out of his own head — 
" he died on a bed of ashes, on the very spot where the 
messenger of Rome found Marius sitting on the ruins of 
Carthage" — an interesting topographical fact, seeing that 
nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage stood at all — ■ 
always saving and excepting M. Alexandre Dumas. 

We stood before a grey, massive tower — a Grothic finger 
of mouldering stone. " Louis de Malagne," said my old 
cicerone^ " a traitorous Frenchman, delivered these holy 
walls to our enemies of Burgundy, and the garrison of the 
Duke's held possession of the sacred city of Aigues-Mortes. 
But the sacrilege was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme 
was spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople rose 
within the walls, and, step by step, the foreign garrison were 
driven back till they fought in a ring round this old tower. 



206 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

They fought well, and died hard, but they did die — every 
man — always round this old tower. So, when the question 
came to be, where to fling the corpses, a citizen said, ' This 
is a town of salt ; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes — let 
us salt the Burgundians.' And another said, ' Truly, there 
is a cask ready for the meat,' and he pointed to the tower. 
Then they laid the dead men stark and stiff, as though to 
floor the tower. Then they heaped salt on them, a layer 
two feet thick ; then they put on another stratum of Bur- 
gundian flesh, and another stratum of salt — till the tower 
was as a cask — choke-full — bursting-full of pickled Burgun- 
dians." 

Much more he told me of the early fortunes of the Place 
— how here Francis I. met his enemy, Charles V., in solemn 
conference, each monarch utterly disbelieving every sacred 
word uttered by the other ; and how the celebrated Alge- 
rine pirate, Barbarossa, who was the very patriarch of buc- 
caneers — the Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans 
and Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon his 
flags the famous motto, " The Friend of the Sea, and the 
Enemy of All who sail upon it" — how this red-bearded 
rover once cast anchor off the port, and by way of notifying 
to France that their ally against the Spaniard had arrived, 
set flre to a wood of Italian pine on the margin of the 
marshes, and lighted up the whole country by the lurid 
blaze. Of the Camisards, of whom I was more anxious to 
hear — of the poisoning in the tower of St. Constance, and 
of the band of braves who descended from the summit upon 
tattered strips of blankets — he knew comparatively little. 
His mind was mediaeval. Aigues-Mortes in the day of 
Louis Quatorze, was a declining plaee. The glory had gone 
out of it, and the unappeasable fever was slowly, but surely, 
claiming its own. Indeed, for a century it had been mas- 



EEBOUrS POETRY. 207 

ter, Aigues-Mortes will probably vanisli. like Qatton and 
old Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling walls, 
will slowly be invaded by the sleeping waters of the marsh ; 
and the heron, and the duck, and the meek-eyed gull wan- 
dering from the sea, will alone flit restlessly over the city 
built by Louis the Saint, walled by Philip the Bold, and 
blessed by one of the wisest and the holiest of the Popes. 

Reboul, the Nismes poet — I called upon him, but he 
was from home — is a baker, and lives by selling rolls, as 
Jasmin is a barber, and lives by scraping chins. Reboul is, 
like M. Auguste Saint Jean, an enthusiastic lover of the 
poor, dying, fever-struck Gothic town. Let me translate, 
as well as I may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he charac- 
terises the dear city of the Crusades. The poetry is not 
unlike Victor Hugo's — stern, rich, fanciful, and coloured, 
like an old cathedral window. 

" See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp, 
Where, steaming np, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp : 

How the holy, royal city — Aigues-Mortes, that silent town, 
Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled 
down. 

See liow its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend, 
Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end ; 

With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest. 
Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest — 

Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale, 
Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail — 

Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall, 
Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall." 

From the town, we partially floated, in a boat, and par- 
tially toiled through swamp and sand to the sea — Auguste 



208 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

constantly preaching on the antiquarian topography of the 
place, upon old canals, and middle-aged canals — one oblite- 
rating the other ; on the route which the galleys of St. 
Louis followed from the walls to the ocean ; on a dreary 
spot between sand-hills, which he called les Tombeaux^ and 
where, by his account, the Crusaders who died before the 
starting of the expedition lie buried in their armour of 
pooof ^ Then we toiled to a little harbour — a mere fisher- 
man's creek — where it is supposed the ancient canal of St. 
Louis joined the sea, and which still bears the name of the 
Grau Louis^ or the Grau de Roi — " grau" being under- 
stood to be a corruption oi gradus. At this spot, rising in 
the midst of a group of clustered huts, the dwellings of fish- 
ermen and agued douaniers^ one or two of whom were lazily 
angling off the piers — their chief occupation — there stands 
a lighthouse, about forty feet high. 

" Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste, " and you 
will then see our silent land, and our poor dear old fading 
town lying at our feet." 

Accordingly we went up ; only poor Auguste stopped 
every three steps to cough ; and before we had got half 
way, the perspiration came streaming down his yellow face, 
proving what might have been a matter of dispute before — 
that he had some moisture somewhere in his body. From 
the top we both gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. 
On one side, the sea, blue — purple blue ; on the other side, 
something which was neither sea nor land — water and 
swamp — pond and marsh — bulrush thickets, and tamarisk 
jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points, and headlands, 
into the salt sea lakes ; in the centre of them — like the ark 
grounding after the deluge — the grey walls of Aigues- 
Mortes. Between the great ^nare internum and the la- 
goons, rolling sand-hills — the barrier-line of the coast — and 



THE LIGHTEOUSE OF AlGUES-MORTES. 209 

"upon them, but afar off, moving specks — the semi-wild cattle 
of the country ; white dots — the Arab-blooded horses which 
are used for flails ; black dots — the wild bulls and cows, 
which the mounted herdsmen drive with couched lance and 
flying lasso. 

" Is it not beautiful ?" murmured Auguste ; " I think it 
so. I was born here. I love this landscape — it is so grand 
in its flatness ; the shore is as grand as the sea. Look, 
there are distant hills" — pointing to the shadowy outline of 
the Cevennes — " but the hills are not so glorious as the 
plain." 

" But neither have they the fever of the plain." 
" It is Grod's will. But, fever or no fever, I love this 
land — so quiet, and still, and solemn — ay, monsieur, as 
solemn as the deserts of the Arabs, or as a cathedral at 
midnight — as solemn, and as strange, and as awful, as the 
early world, fresh from the making, with the birds flying, 
and the fish swimming, on the evening of the fifth day, be- 
fore the Lord created Adam." 



CHAPTER Xiy. 

FLAT MARSH SCENERY, TREATED BY POETS AND PAINTERS TAVERN ALLEGO- 
RIES NISMES THE AMPHITHEATRE AND THE MAISON CARREE PROTES- 
TANT AND CATHOLIC THE OLD RELIGIOUS WARS ALIYE STILL THE SILK 

WEAVER OF NISME3 AND THE DRAGONN^DES. 

S Launcelot GrobTbo had an infection to serve Bassanio^ 
so I somehow took ill with an infection to walk, instead 
of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that Auguste had innocu- 
lated me, in some measure, with his mysterious love for the 
boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around ; 
so that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would 
willingly depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my 
small baggage, then, by roulage^ I strode forth oiit of the 
dead city, and was soon pacing along the echoing causeway, 
like an Arab steering by the sun in the desert. There is 
one dead and one living English poet who would have made 
glorious use of this fen landscape, so repulsive to many, but 
which did, after all, possess a strange, undefinable attraction 
for me. The dead poet is Shelley, who had the true eye 
for sublimity in waste. Take the following picture-touch : — 

" An uninhabited sea- side, 
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, 
Abandons ; and no other object breaks 
The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes, 
Broken and unrepaired ; and the tide makes 
A narrow space of level sand thereon." 



FEN LANDSCAPE. 2il 

This' is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another de- 
partment of art, Collins delighted in representing. But 
Shelley's picture of the luxuriant rush and water-plant vege- 
tation would have been magnificent. Listen how he handles 
a theme of the kind : 

" And i^lants, at whose names the verse feels loath, 
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth — 
Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue, 
Livid and starred with a lurid dew : 
Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum, 
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb ; 
And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes 
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes." 

Tennyson is the living poet who would picture with 
equal effect the region of swamp, and rush, and pool. 
Brought up in a fen district, his eye and feeling for marsh 
scenery and vegetation are perfect. Remember the marish 
mosses" in the rotting fosse which encircled the ''Moated 
G-range." Musing thus of the Poet Laureate, I would as- 
sign to this landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed 
the half-way tower, where three douaniers^ seated in chairs, 
were fishing and looking as glum and silent as their prey, 
and began to discern the gravelly, shingly land of vines 
and olives again before me. The clear air of the South 
cheats us northerns like a mirage. You see objects as near 
you as in England they would be brought by a very fair 
spy-glass, and the effect, before you began to make allow- 
ances for the atmospheric spectacles, is to put you dread- 
fully out of humour at the length of the way, before you 
actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was it 
strongly with me in pedestrianising towards Lunel. Lunel 
seemed retreating back and back, so that my consolation 
became that it would be surely stopped by the Cevennes, 



212 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

even if the worst came to tlie worst ; and go where it would, 
I was determined to come up with it somehow. Entering 
the region of the vine, the moppy olive, and the dust which 
was flying about in clouds, I halted at a roadside auberge 
to wash the latter article out of my throat, and reaped my 
reward in the sight of a splendid cartoon suspended over 
the great fireplace, which represented, in a severe allegory, 
" The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers." The scene 
j^as a handsome street, with a great open cafe behind, at 
the comjjtoir of which sat Madame Commerce aghast at the 
atrocity being committed before her. In a corner are seen 
a group of gardes cle commerce — in the vernacular, bailiffs 
— lamenting over their ruined occupation. I came to know 
the profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that their 
style and titles were legibly imprinted across their waist- 
coats. In the foreground, the main catastrophe of the 
composition was proceeding. Credit, represented by a fat, 
goodnatured-looking, elderly gentleman in a blue great- 
coat, was stretched supine upon the stones, while his three 
murderers brandished their weapons above him. The de- 
lineation of the culprits was anything but flattering to the 
three classes of society which I took them to represent. 
The '• first murderer," as they say in Macbeth^ was a soldier. 
His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side. The second 
criminal must have been a musician, for he has just hit 
Credit a superhuman blow on the head with a fiddle — not 
a very deadly weapon one would suppose ; while the third 
assassin, armed with a billiard cue, seemed to typify the 
idler portion of the community in general. Between them, 
however, there could be no doubt that Credit had been 
fairly done to death — the grim intimation was there to 
stare all topers in the face. 

The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in the 



TAVERN ALLEGORIES. ' 213 

places of public entertainment, poor M. Credit is in exceed- 
ingly bad odour. I have seen dozens of pictorial hints, 
conveying with more or less delicacy the melancholy moral 
of that just described. Sometimes, however, the landlord 
distrusts the pencil, puts no faith in allegory, and stern 
and prosaic — with a propensity to political economy — and 
giving rise to dark suspicions of a tendency to the Man- 
chester school, writes up in sturdy letters, grim and hope- 
less — 

" Argent Comptant." 

At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates 
into what may be called didactive verse — containing, like 
the " Penny Magazine" — useful knowledge for the people, 
and hints poetically to his customers, the rule of the estab- 
lishment — taking care, however, to intimate to their sus- 
ceptible feelings that generous social impulses, rather than 
sombre commercial necessity, are at the bottom of the re- 
gulation. Thus it is not uncommon to read the following 
pithy and not particularly rhythmical distich : — 

" Pour mieux conserver ses amis, 
Ici on ne fait pas de credit." 

At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of the 
rail brought me to Nismes and to the Hotel de Luxem- 
bourg, running out at the windows with swarms of commis 
voyageurs^ the greater number connected with the silk 
trade. One of these worthies beside whom I was placed 
at dinner, told me that he intended to go to London to the 
Exhibition, and that he had a very snug plan for securing 
a competent guide, who would poke up all the lions ; this 
guide to be a " Marin chc port de Londres ; car tenez ih 
sont des galliards futes^ les marins du 'port de JLoiidresP 



214 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

I had all the difficulty in the world in making the intend- 
ing excursionist aware of the probable effects of hiring, as 
a west-end guide, the first sailor or waterman he picked up 
at Wapping. 

The great features of Nismes are, as every body knows, 
the features which the Romans left behind them, Pro- 
vence and Languedoc were the regions of Gaul which the 
great masters of the world liked best, probably because 
they were nearest home ; and obscure as was the Roman 
Nismes — for I believe that Nimauses lays claim to no his- 
toric dignity whatever — it must still have been a populous 
and important place : the unmouldering masonry of the 
Roman builders proves it. I had never seen any Roman 
remains to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been 
able to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments 
of the ancient people which I had come across. I had 
bathed in all the Roman baths, wherewith London abounds, 
but found no inspiration in the waters — I had stood on 
grassy mounds of earth, believed to have been Roman 
camps ; traced like the Antiquary, the Ager^ with its corre- 
sponding fossa — marked the porta sinistra and the 2^orta 
dextra — and stood where some hook-nosed general had 
reclined in the jP7'etoruwi ; but I again confess that my 
imagination did not fly impulsively back, and bury itself 
among patres conscrip)ti^ togas, vestal virgins, lictors, patri- 
cians, equites, and plebeians. 

And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials as 
baths, bits of pavement, and dusty holes, with smouldering 
brick-basements, which people call " Roman villas," — are 
not at all fitted, whatever would-be classicists may pretend, 
to stir up the strong tide of enthusiastic association. These 
are but miserable odds and ends of fragments, from which 
you can no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of 



ROMAN REMAINS. 215 

tlie Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a 
man, from finding a cast-away tooth-pick, up to the appear- 
ance and nature of the invisible owner. But let us see a 
a great specimen of a great Roman work, and then we are 
in the right track. Any builder could have made you a 
bath — any sapper and miner could have traced you out a 
camp — any of the small architects with whom we are in- 
fested could have knocked you up a villa — but give us a 
characteristic bit of the great people who are dead and 
gone, and then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take 
their measure. 

The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me like a 
stupendous spectre, and frowned me down. I was smote 
with the sight. The size appalled me : mightiness — vast- 
ness — massiveness were there together — a trinity of stone, 
rising up, as it were, in the middle of my little preconceived 
and pet notions, and shivering and dispersing them, as the 
English three-decker in the Tilot came bowling into view, 
driving away the fogs in wreaths before her and around 
her. First I walked about the great stone skeleton ; but 
though the symmetrical glory of the architecture, its mas- 
sive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like precision 
of uniformity, kept urging my mind to look and admire ; 
still the impression of vastness was predominant, and all 
but drove out other thoughts. And yet it was not until I 
had entered, that that impression reached its profoundest 
depth. 

As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like corridor, 
through which a garrulous old woman led me, into the blaze 
of keen sunshine, that fell upon a mighty wilderness of 
stone ; and as instinctively I laid my hand upon the 
nearest ponderous block, the full and perfect idea of size 
and power closed on me. Roma I — Antiqua Roma ! — 



216 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

had me in her grasp ; and as I felt, I remembered that 
Bothen had described a similar sensation, as produced by 
the bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old 
woman having, happily, left me, I was alone within that 
enormous gulf — that crater of regularly rising stone. 
Kound and round, in ridges where Titans might have sat 
and seen, megatheria combat mastadons, mounted up the 
mighty steps of grey, dead stone — sometimes entire for the 
whole round — sometimes splintered and riven, but never 
worn, until your eye — now stumbling, as it were, over rub- 
bish-heaps — now striding from stone ledge to stone ledge — 
rested upon the broken and jagged rim, with a hoary beard 
of pjants and long dry weeds standing rigidly up between 
you and the blue. I turned again to the details of the 
building — to the vastness of the blocks of stone, and to the 
perfect manipulation which had placed them. If the Ro- 
mans were great soldiers, they were as great masons. They 
conquered the world in all pursuits in which enormous 
energy and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The 
universe of earth and stone and water was theirs. But 
they were not cloud compellers. They had none of the 
great power over the essences of the brain. Beauty was 
too subtle for them ; and they only got it, incidentally, as 
an element — ^not a principle. The arena in which I stood 
was sternly beautiful ; but it was the beauty of a legion 
drawn up for battle — iron to the back-bone — iron to the 
teeth — the beauty of that rigid symmetric inflexibility 
which sat upon the bronze faces which, when Hannibal en- 
camped on Roman ground, set up for sale and grimly and 
unmovedly saw, bought at the common market rate, the 
patch of earth on which the Carthaginian lay entrenched, 

I remained in the amphitheatre for hours — now descend- 
ing to the arena, where the men and beasts fought and tore 



ROMAN THEATRICALS. 217 

eacli other — now scrambling to the highest ridge, and 
watching, with a calmness which soothed and lulled the 
mind, the vast bowl which lay beneath — so massive, so si- 
lent, and so grey. You can still trace the two posts of 
honour — the royal boxes, as it were — low down in the ring, 
and marked out by stone barriers from the general sweep. 
Each of them has an exclusive corridor sunk in the massive 
stone ; and behind each are vaulted cells, which you will be 
told were used as guard-houses by the escort of soldiers or 
lictors. Tradition assigns one of these boxes to the pro- 
consul — the other to the vestal virgins ; but the latter, if 
I remember my Roman antiquities aright, could have no 
business out of Rome. There were no subsidiary sacred 
fire-branch establishments, like provincial banks, to pro- 
mulgate the credit of the " central office," — kindled in the 
remote part of the empire. The holy flame burnt only be- 
fore the mystic palladium, which answered for the security 
of Rome. Whoever occupied the boxes in question, how- 
ever, were no doubt what one of Captain Marryatt's char- 
acters describes the Smith family to be in London — " quite 
the topping people of the place ;" and up to them, no doubt, 
after the gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist, 
and the thundering shout of " Habet !" had died away, the 
poor Scythian, or Roman, .as the case might be, turned a 
sadly inquiring eye — intent upon the hands of the great 
personages on whom his doom depended — on the upturned 
or the downturned thumb. A very interesting portion of 
the arena is the labyrinth of corridors, passages, and stairs, 
which honeycomb its massive masonry, and into which, in 
the event of a shower, the whole body of spectators could 
at once retreat, leaving the great circles of stone as deserted 
as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the arrangements, 
that there could have been very little crowding. The 
10 



218 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

vomitories get wider and wider as they approach the en- 
trance, where the people would emerge on every side, like 
the drops of water flung off by the rotatory motion of a 
mop. There was an odd resemblance to the general dispo- 
sition of the open corridors and staircases, which struck me 
in the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind. 
One could fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses, 
in their scented tunics, clasped with glittering stones, and 
their broad purple girdles — the Tyrian hue, as the poets 
say — gathering in knots, and discussing a blow which had 
split a fellow creature's head open, as our own opera ele- 
gants might Grisi's celebrated holding-note in Norina^ or 
Duprez's famous ut du poitrine. The execution of a de- 
butant with the sword might be praised, as the execution 
now-a-days of a 'prima donna. Rumours might be dis- 
cussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in some 
obscure arena, as the cognoscenti now whisper the reported 
merits of a tenor discovered in Barcelona or Palermo ; 
and the habitues would delight to inform each other that 
the spirited and enterprising management had secured the 
services of the celebrated Berbix, whose career at Massilia, 
for instance, had excited such admiration — the artiste 
having killed fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight. 
And then, after the pleasant and critical chat between the 
acts, the trumpets would again sound, and all the world 
would turn out upon the vast stone benches — the nobles 
and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the stalls with us, and 
the lower and slave population high up on the further 
benches, like the humble folks and the footmen in the gal- 
lery ; and then would recommence that exhibition of which 
the Romans could never have enough, and of which they 
never tired — the excitement of the shedding of blood. 

From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison 



THE MAISON CABBEM. 219 

Oarree. All the great Roman remains lie upon the open 
Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked and crowded old 
town, while without the circle rise the spacious streets of 
new quartiers for the rich, and many a long straggling sub- 
urb, where, in mean garrets and unwholesome cellars, the 
poor handloom weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which 
rival the choicest products of Lyons. Presently, to the 
left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre ; and to the right, 
the wondrous Maison Garree. The day of which I am writ- 
ing was certainly my day of architectural sensation. First, 
Rome, with her hugeness and her symmetric strength, 
gripped me ; and now, Grreece, with her pure and ethereal 
beauty, which is essentially of the spirit, enthralled me. 
The Maison Carree was, no doubt, built by Roman hands, 
but entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens : 
not at all of Rome — a Corinthian temple of the purest 
taste and divinest beauty — small, slight, without an atom 
of the ponderous majesty of the arena — reigning by love 
and smiles, like Venus ; not by frowns and thunder, like 
Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that the Maison Carree was 
a gem which ought to be set in gold ; and the two great 
Jupiters of France — Louis Quatorze and Napoleon — had 
both of them schemes for lifting the temple bodily out of 
the ground and carrying it to Paris. The building is per- 
fectly simple — merely an oblong square, with a portico, and 
fluted Corinthian pillars, yet the loveliness of it is like en- 
chantment. The essence of its power over the senses 
appears to me to consist in an exquisite subtlety of propor- 
tion, which amounts to the very highest grace and the very 
purest and truest beauty. How many qitasi G-recian 
buildings had I seen — all porticoed and caryatided — with- 
out a sensation, save that the pile before me was cold and 
perhaps correct — a sort of stone formulary. I had begun 



220 CLABET AND OLIVES. 

to fear that Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that 
Greek beauty was cant, when the Maison Carree in a mo- 
ment utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was solved : I 
had never seen Grecian architecture before. The things 
which our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian — their St. 
Martin's porticoes, and St. Pancras churches, bear about 
the same relation to the divine original, as the old statue 
of George IV. at King's Gross to the Apollo Belvidere. 
Of course, these gentry — of whom we assuredly know none 
— whose powers qualify them to grapple with a higher task 
than a dock warehouse or a railway tavern, have picked all 
manner of faults in the divine proportions of this wondrous 
edifice. There is some bricklaying cant about a departure 
from the proportions of Vitruvius, which, I presume, are faith- 
fully observed in the National Gallery, and some modifica- 
tion of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion at Brighton — which 
variations are gravely censured in the Maison Carree ; while, 
in order, doubtless, to show our modern superiority, the 
French hodmen have erected a theatre just opposite the 
Corinthian temple, with a portico — heavens and earth! 
such a portico — a mass of mathematical clumsiness, with pil- 
lars like the legs of aldermen suffering from dropsy. Any- 
thing more intensely ugly is not to be found in Christendom. 
It actually beats the worst monstrosity of London ; and 
this dreadful caricature of the deathless work of the glori- 
ous Greeks is erected right opposite to, perhaps, the most 
perfect piece of building and stone-carving in the world. 

I believe that it requires neither art-training nor classic 
knowledge to enjoy^ the unearthly beauty of the Corinthian 
temple. Give me a healthy-minded youth, who has never 
heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles, Socrates, or -^schylus, 
but who has the natural appreciation of beauty — who can 
admire the droop of a lily, the spring of a deer, the flight 



PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM. 221 

of an eagle — set him opposite tlie Maison Carree, and the 
sensation of divine, transcendent beauty, will rush into his 
heart and brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast, 
or bird. The big man in the parish at home will point you 
out the graces of the new church of St, Kold Without, de- 
signed after the antique manner, by the celebrated Mr. 
Jones Smith, and because you hesitate to acknowledge 
them, will read you a benignant lecture on the impossibility 
of making people with uneducated taste, fully appreciate 
what he will be sure to call the " severity " of Grreek archi- 
tecture ; the worthy man himself having been dinned with 
the apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come 
actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave sermons 
preached about educating and training taste. An educated 
and trained taste will, no doubt, admire with even more 
fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment ; but he who 
cannot, at the first glance, see and feel the perfect grace of 
pure Grrecian art, must be insensible to the blue of the sky, 
to the beauty of running water, to the song of the birds, and 
the silver radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the am- 
phitheatre while I remained in Nismes, but I haunted the 
temple. The grandeur, and the massiveness of the Roman 
work, was like the north wind. It rudely buffetted the 
wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak. The Grrecian trophy 
shone out like the gentle sun, and the traveller doffed man- 
tle and cap to pay it adoration. 

Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points of 
France where Protestantism and Catholicism still glare 
upon each other with hostile and threatening eyes. The 
old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has descended lineally 
from the remote times of the Albigenses, and at this mo- 
ment broods as bitterly over the olive city as when Ray- 
mond of Toulouse proclaimed a crusade against the Pauli- 



222 GLABET AND OLIVES. 

cian, heretics and twenty thousand people were slaughtered 
under the pastoral care of the Bishop of Beziers. That 
the animosity, however, has not died out centuries ago, we 
have to thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame 
de Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter war upon ^ 
the Huguenots of the Cevennes as ever their fathers of 
these same mountains had been exposed to. The dragon- 
nades are still fiercely remembered in the South. The old 
world stories in Scotland of the cruelties of Claverhouse 
and his life-guards, have well nigh ceased to excite anything 
like personal bitterness ; but in portions of Languedoc, the 
animosity between neighbour and neighbour — Catholic and 
Protestant — is still deepened and widened by the oft-told 
legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes is the 
head quarters of the sectarianism — Catholics and Protes- 
tants are drawn up in two compacted hostile bodies, living 
for the most part in separate quartiers^ marrying each 
party within itself, scandalising each party the other when- 
ever it has a chance ; and carrying, indeed, the party spirit 
so far as absolutely to have established Protestant cafH 
and Catholic cafes^ the hahitiies of which will no more en- 
ter the rival establishments than they would enter the 
opposition churches. 

The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity 
of becoming acquainted with the spirit of the place. North 
from Nismes rises a species of chaos of steep hills and deep 
valleys, or rather ravines, composed almost entirely of 
shingle and rock, covered over, however, with olive-groves 
and vines, and dotted with little white summer-houses, to 
which almost the entire middle and working class popula- 
tion retire upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivat- 
ing their patches of land — there is hardly a family without 
an allotment — and partly to amuse themselves after the 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT. 223 

toils of the week. Rambling among these rugged hills and 
dales, I chanced to ask my way of a person I met descend- 
ing towards Nismes. He was a tall, tmgainly, raw-boned 
man — pallid and worn, as if with sedentary labour ; but he 
seemed intelligent, and was very polite — pointing out a 
number of localities around. Presently, he told me that he 
had been up to his cabane, or summer-house ; that he was 
a silk-weaver in Nismes ; that his wages were so poor, that 
he had a hard struggle to live ; but that he still managed to 
give up an hour's work or so a day to go and feed his rab- 
bits at the cabane. As we talked, he inquired whether I 
were not a foreigner — an Englishman — and, with some 
hesitation, but with great eagerness — a Protestant ? My 
affirmative answer to the last interrogatory produced a 
magical effect. The man's face actually gleamed. He 
jumped off the ground, let fall his apronful of melons and 
fresh figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and 
exclaimed, " A Protestant ! Dieit merci ! Dieu wierci ! an 
English Protestant ! Oh, how glad I am to see an English 
Protestant ! Listen, monsieur. We are here. We of the 
religion (the old phrase — as old as Rosny and Coligni), we 
are here fifteen thousand strong — fifteen thousand, monsieur. 
Don't believe those who* say only ten. Fifteen thousand, 
monsieur — good men and true. All ready — all standing by 
one another — all braves — all on the qui vive — all prepared, 
if the hour should come. We know each other — we love 
each other, and we hate " — a pause ; then with a significant 
grin — " les autres. You will tell that in England, monsieur, 
to our brothers. Fifteen thousand, monsieur ; and every 
man, woman, and child, true to the cause and the faith." 

The whole tone of the orator did not appear to be so 
much a matter of religious bitterness, as it marked a hatred 
of race. The two contending parties at Nismes were evi- 



224 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

dently of different blood : their religious animosities had 
gradually divided them into two distinct and hostile peoples. 

" See !" said the weaver ; " this is the Protestant side of 
the valley, — all Protestants here. Not a Catholic cahane — 
no, no ! they must go elsewhere, — we have nothing to do 
with them, — we shake off the dust of our feet upon them 
and theirs. You and I are one, upon our own ground — 
Protestant ground — staunch and true ;" and he stamped 
with his foot upon the pebbles. " Monsieur must absolute- 
ly go with me to my cabane^ and drink a glass of wine to 
the good cause ; and see my rabbits — Protestant rabbits." 

Who could resist this last attraction ? We turned and 
toiled up the flinty paths together ; my acquaintance in- 
forming me, with great pride, that M. Guizot was a good 
Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who had fallen, dans le 
terreur^ was before him. He understood that M. Guizot 
was then in England, and he was sure that he would be de- 
lighted at seeing such a fine Protestant country, and such a 
staunch Protestant people. Stopping at length at an un- 
painted door, in the rough, unmortared wall, my friend 
opened it, and we stepped into a little patch of garden, 
planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes. " They are 
much better cultivated, and give -better oil and wine," he 
said, " than the Catholic grounds ;" and I am sure he be- 
lieved the asseveration. Having duly inspected the " Pro- 
testant rabbits," we entered the cabane^ a bare, rough, white- 
washed room, with a table, a few chairs, and unglazed lattices. 
Unless when the mistral blows, the open air is seldom or 
never unpleasant, and then wooden shutters are applied to 
the windward side of the houses. On this occasion, how- 
ever, there was not a breath stirring amid the silvery grey 
leaves of the olives. The grasshoppers — fellows of a size 
which would astound Sir Thomas Gresham — chirped and 



THE WEAVEE'S GABANE. 225 

leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall ; scores and scores 
of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of eyes, flashed up 
and down over the rough stones, and shot in and out of the 
crevices ; but, excepting these sights and sounds, all around 
was hushed and motionless ; and the sun, wintry though it 
was, flooded all the still, brown valley with a deluge of pure, 
hot light. 

The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of glasses 

with a small, but not ill-tasted, wine. " Here's to ;" he 

uttered a sentiment not complimentary to the Catholic 
Church, and, indeed, consigning it to the warmest of quar- 
ters, and took off his liquor with undeniable unction. I 
need not say whether I drunk the toast : anyhow, I drunk 
the wine. 

" And now look there," continued my host, pointing with 
his empty glass through the open window to the north. The 
bare, blue hills of the Ce venues lay — a long ridge of moun- 
tain scenery, stretching from the valley of the Rhone as far 
and farther than the eye could follow them — towards that 
of the G-aronne. 

" There it was," he said, " that were fought the fiercest 
battles, in those cruel times, between the people of the re- 
ligion and the troops of the king. Can you see a valley or 
a ravine just over the olive there ? My eyes are too much 
worn to see it ; but we look at it every Sunday — my wife 
and my children. That was the valley, monsieur, where 
my family lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth 
that they made in those days, and tending their flocks upon 
the hill. Early in the troubles, their cottage was beset by 
the dragoons of the king. The mother of the family was 
suckling her child. They bound her to the bed-post, and 
put the child just beyond her reach, and told her that not 
a drop more should pass its lips till she cried Ave Maria 
10* 



226 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

and made the sign of the cross. They took the father and 
hung him by the feet, head downward, from the roof-tree, 
and he died hanging. The children they ranged round the 
mother, and tied matches between their fingers ; and, when 
the first match burned down to the flesh, the mother cried 
Ave Maria and made the sign of the cross. Then they re- 
leased her, and held an orgie in the cottage all night long, 
and the widow and the children served them. Next morn- 
ing, the woman was mad, and she wandered away into the 
woods with her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her 
more. The children were scattered over the country ; and, 
whether they lived or died, I know not ; but one of them, 
monsieur, the eldest girl, whose name was Nicole, became 
a famous prophetess. Yes, monsieur; she was inspired, and 
taught the people among the rocks and the wild gorges of 
the hills. First, she had V avertissement — that is, the warn- 
ing, or first degree of inspiration ; and then the souffie^ or 
the breath of the Lord, came on her, and she spoke ; at last, 
she was endowed with la prophetie^ and told what would 
come to pass. Yes, monsieur ; and many of her prophecies 
are yet preserved, and they came true ; for in times like 
these God acts by extraordinary means. The people, mon- 
sieur, loved her, and honoured her, and kept her so well, 
and hid her so closely, that the persecutors could never 
seize her ; and she survived the troubles ; and I, monsieur, 
a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her 
descendant." 

That night I walked late along the Boulevards. Pro- 
testant cafis and Catholic cafis were full and busy, and, no 
doubt, resounding with the polemics of the warring creeds. 
Outside all, the by turns straggling and crowded town lay, 
bathed in the most glorious flood of moonlight, poured down, 
happily, alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the 



PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC. 227 

grey cathedral, with its Grothic arches, and the heathen 
temple, with its fluted columns, and surely preaching by the 
universal-blessing ray, that sermon — so continuous in its 
delivery, yet so little heeded by the congregation of the 
world — the sermon which enjoins charity and forbearance, 
and love and peace, among all men. 



CHAPTER THE LAST. 

AGEICULTUKE IN FRANCE ITS BACKWARD STATE CENTRALISING TENDENCY 

SUBDIVISION OF PROPERTY ^ITS EFFECTS FRENCH "ENCUMBERED ES- 
TATES." 

IN the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as much re- 
gard to a readable liveliness, and to vivid local colouring 
as I could command, the features and incidents of part — 
the most interesting one — of an extended journey through 
France. My primary purpose in undertaking the latter 
was, to prepare a view of the social and agricultural condi- 
tion of the peasantry, for publication in the columns of the 
Morning Chronicle ; and accordingly a series of letters, 
devoted to that important subject, duly appeared. These 
communications, however, were necessarily confined to state- 
ments of agricultural progress, and the investigation of solid 
social subjects, to the exclusion of those matters of personal 
incident and artistic, literary, and legendary significance, 
which naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory and 
inquiring journey. To this latter field — that of the tourist 
rather than the commissioner — then, I have devoted the 
foregoing chapters ; but I am unwilling to send them forth 
without appending to them — extracted from my concluding 
Letter in the Morning Chronicle — a summary of my im- 
pressions of the social condition of the French agricultural 



BAOKWABD FRENCH AGBIGULTURE. 229 

population, and the effects of the system of the infinitesimal 
division of the land. These impressions are founded upon 
a five months' journey through France, keeping mainly in 
the country places, being constantly in communication with 
the people themselves, and hearing also the opinions of the 
priests and men of business engaged in rural affairs, as well 
as reading authors upon all sides of the question. My con- 
clusions I have summed up carefully, and with great delibe- 
ration ; and I offer them as an honest, and not ill-founded 
estimate of the present state and future prospects of rural 
France. 

The French are undoubtedly at least a century behind 
us in agricultural science and skill. This remark applies 
alike to breeding cattle and to raising crops. Agriculture 
in France is rather a handicraft than what it ought to be — 
a science. As a general rule, the farmers of France are 
about on a level with the ploughmen of England. When I 
say this, I mean that the immense majority of the cultiva- 
tors are unlettered peasants — hinds — who till the land in 
the unvarying, mechanical routine handed down to them 
from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any other sense 
than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing, sowing, reap- 
ing, and threshing, they know literally nothing. Of the 
rationale of the management of land — of the reasons why 
so and so should be done — they think no more than honest 
La Balafre, whose only notion of a final cause was the com- 
mand of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down in 
the most abject submission to every custom, for no other 
reason than that it is a custom ; their fathers did so and so, 
and therefore, and for no other reason, the sons do the same. 
I could see no struggling upwards, no longing for a better 
condition, no discontent, even with the vegetable food upon 
which they lived. All over the land there brooded one al- 



230 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

most unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive content 
— I do not mean social- — but industrial content. 

There are two causes principally chargeable with this. 
In the first place, strange as it may seem in a country in 
which two-thirds of the population are agriculturists, agri- 
culture is a very unhonored occupation. Develope, in the 
slightest degree, a Frenchman's mental faculties, and he flies 
to a town as surely as steel filings fly to a loadstone. He 
has no rural tastes — no delight in rural habits. A French 
amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see. Again, 
this national tendency is directly encouraged by the central- 
izing system of government — by the multitude of officials, 
and by the payment of all functionaries. From all parts of 
France, men of great energy and resource struggle up and 
fling themselves on the world of Paris. There they try to 
become great functionaries. Through every department of 
the eighty-four, men of less energy and resource struggle up 
to the chef-lieu — the provincial capital. There they try to 
become little functionaries. Go still lower — deal with a 
still smaller scale — and the result will be the same. As is 
the department to France, so is the arrondissement to the 
department, and the commune to the arrondissement. Nine- 
tenths of those who have, or think they have, heads on their 
shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for office. Nine- 
tenths of those who are, or are deemed by themselves or 
others, too stupid for anything else, are left at home to till 
the fields, and breed the cattle, and prune the vines, as their 
ancestors did for generations before them. Thus there is 
singularly little intelligence left in the country. The whole 
energy, and knowledge, and resource of the land are barreled 
up in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many cases, 
you will not meet an educated or cultivated individual until 
you arrive at another — all between is utter intellectual bar- 



FRENCH BUBAL SGENEBY. 231 

renness. The English country gentleman, we all know, is 
not a faultless character, but his useful qualities far prevail 
over his defects ; and it is only when traversing a land all 
but destitute of any such order that the fatal effects of the 
blank are fully realized. Were there more country gentle- 
men in France, there would be more animal food and more 
wheaten bread in the country. The very idea of a great 
proprietor living upon his estates implies the fact of an edu- 
cated person — an individual more or less rubbed and polished 
and enlightened by society — taking his place amongst a class 
who must naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must 
necessarily, to a greater or less degree, leaven. It is easy 
to joke about English country gentlemen — about their foi- 
bles, and prejudices, and absurd points ; but to the jokers I 
would seriously say, " Gro to France ; examine its agriculture, 
and the structure and calibre of its rural society, and see 
the result of the utter absence of a class of men — certainly 
not Solomons, and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all 
that, most useful personages — individuals with capital, with 
at all events, a certain degree of enlightenment — taking an 
active interest in farming — often amateur farmers themselves 
— the patrons of district clubs, and ploughing matches, and 
cattle shows — and, above all, living daily among their ten- 
antry, and having an active and direct interest in that ten- 
antry's prosperity." I do not mean to say that here and 
there, all over France, there may not be found active and 
intelligent resident landlords, nor that, in the north of 
France, there may not be discovered intelligent and clear- 
headed tenant-farmers ; but the rule is as I have stated. 
Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to plod on from genera- 
tion to generation, wrapped in the most dismal mists of 
agricultural superstition ; while what in America would be 
called the " smart" part of the population, are intriguing, 



232 CLARET AND OLIVES. 

and constructing and undoing complots^ in the towns. To 
all present appearance, a score of dynasties may succeed 
each other in France before La Vendee takes its place be- 
side Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the Lothians. 

A word as to the subdivision of property , I know the 
extreme difficulties of the subject, and the moral considera- 
tions which, in connection with it, are often placed in oppo- 
sition to admitted physical and economical disadvantages. 
I shall, therefore, without discussing the question at any 
length, mention two or three personally ascertained facts : 

The tendency of landed properties, under the system in 
question, is to continual diminution of size. 

This tendency does not stop with the interests of the 
parties concerned — it goes on in spite of them. 

And the only practical check is nothing but a new evil- 
When a man finds that his patch of land is insufficient to 
support his family, he borrows money and buys more land. 
In nine cases out of ten, the interest to be paid to the lender 
is greater than the profit which the borrower can extract from 
the land — and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition of 
a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable result. 

The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated in the 
most rude and uneconomical fashion. Not a franc of capi- 
tal, further than that sunk in the purchase of spades, picks, 
and hoes, is expended on them. They are undrained, ill- 
manured, expensively worked, and they would often produce 
no profit whatever were it not that the proprietor is the la- 
bourer, and that he looks for little or nothing, save a recom- 
pense for his toil in a bare subsistence. It is easy to see 
how the consumer must fare if the producer possess little or 
no surplus after his own necessities are satisfied. 

It is not to be supposed from the above remarks, that I 
conceive that in no circumstances, and under no conditions. 



FRENCH ENCUMBERED ESTATES. 233 

can the soil be advantageously divided into minute proper- 
ties. The rule which strikes me as applying to the matter 
is this :— where spade-husbandry can be legitimately 
adopted, then the extreme subdivision of land loses much, if 
not all, of its evils. The reason is plain : spade-husbandry, 
while it pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in certain 
cases, developes in an economical manner the resources of 
tie soil. The instance of market-gardens near a populous 
town is a case in point. But in a remote district, removed 
from markets, ill provided with the means of locomo- 
tion—where cereals, not vegetables, must be raised— 
spade-labour is so far mere toil flung away. Near Nismes 
I found a man digging a field which ought to have been 
ploughed. He told me that the spade produced more than 
the plough. Then why did not the farmers use spade- 
husbandry % " Because, although spade-husbandry was very 
productive, it was still more expensive. It paid a small 
proprietor who could do the work himself, but not a large 
proprietor, who had to remunerate his labourers." Herein 
then, lies the fallacy. Truly considered, a mode of cultiva- 
tion unprofitable for the great proprietor, must be unprofit 
able, in the long run, for the small proprietor also. The 
former, by spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying ex- 
travagantly for labour ; the latter must pay for labour as 
well, but he pays himself, and is therefore unconscious of the 
outlay— an outlay which is, nevertheless, not the less real. 
If the plough, at an expense of 5s., can produce 205. worth of 
produce— and if the spade, at an expense of 20s., can produce 
30s. worth of produce — the difi'erence between the propor- 
tionate outlays is so much deducted from the resources of 
the country in which the transaction takes place ; and this 
because that difi'erence of labour, or of money representing 
labour, if otherwise applied — as by the agency of the plough 



234 CLARET AND OLIVES, 

it would be free to be applied — might, profitably to its pro- 
prietor, still raise the sum total of the production to the 
stated amount of 305. 

Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade- 
husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious to the 
social and industrial interests of the community in which 
they exist ? 

The following propositions appear to me to sum up 
what may be said on either side of the question : 

Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an 
industrious population. A man always works hardest for 
himself. 

Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of indepen- 
dence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance. 

On the other hand — 

Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant 
race of proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the 
whole community of consumers ; and — 

Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is 
the interest of their owners that they should become. 
Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest, is then had 
recourse to for the purpose of enlarging individual proper- 
ties — and the result is the production of a race of involved, 
mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors. 

At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of 
France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ire- 
land. The number of " Encumbered Estates " across the 
Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The capi- 
talists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and 
not the peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. 
The nominal proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at 
every struggle, and they see no hope before them — save one 
— Socialism. French Socialism is simply the result of 



FRENCH ENCUMBERED ESTATES. 235 

Frencli poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but 
casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. 
He has no right to his life unless he can support himself; 
and as the ponderous machine of the law gradually grinds 
down his property to an extent too small for him to exist 
on. and as the increasing interest swallows up the compara- 
tively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a 
scramble. There is property — there is food — and it will go 
hard but he shall have a share of them. Herein is the 
whole problem of the dreaded Socialism. I cannot put the 
matter better than in the words of the old song — 

" Moll in the wad and I fell out, 

And this is what it was all about, 

She had money, and I had none, 
And that was the way the row begun." 

Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of heritage 
might not check the evil, I am not of course going to in- 
quire ; but the present state of rural France — all political 
considerations left aside — appears to me to point to the 
possibility, if not the probability, of the world seeing a 
greater and bloodier Jacquerie yet than it ever saw before. 



THE END. 



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